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LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


Ex  Libris 
ISAAC    FOOT 


NOVA  HIBERNIA 


BY  MICHAEL  M  ON  AH  AN 

AT  THE  SIGN  OF  THE  VAN 
ADVENTURES  IN  LIFE  AND  LETTERS 
HEINRICH  HEINE 
PALMS  OF  PAPYRUS 
NOVA  H1BERNIA 


NOVA     HIBERNIA 

IRISH  POETS  AND  DRAMATISTS 
OF  TODAY  AND  YESTERDAY 


BY 
MICHAEL    MONAHAN 


in 


m 


NEW  YORK 

MITCHELL  KENNERLEY 

1914 


COPYRIGHT   1914,   BY  MITCHELL   KENNERLEY 


%' 


TRK     n.IMrTON     TRESS 
NORWOODMASSU-S-A 


TO 

CAPTAIN  MITCHELL  McDONALD 

A  man  out  of  Plutarch,  who  in  our  day  has 
revived  the  heroic  legend  of  friendship, 
this  book  of  Irish  heroes  is  in- 
scribed, with  every  senti- 
ment of  honour  and 
affection  by  his 
friend 

The  Author 
New  York,  January,  1914 


CONTENTS 


page 

Nova  Hibernia 

3 

Yeats  and  Synge 

13 

The  Matter  with  the  "  Playboy  " 

30 

Thomas  Moore 

38 

Poet  and  Patriot 

45 

The  Poet's  Censors 

53 

The  Lyrist 

61 

Lalla  Rookh 

78 

His  Prose 

90 

Critical  Depreciation 

96 

A  Famous  Duel 

105 

His  Personality 

"3 

Irish  Prejudice  against  Moore 

121 

James  Clarence  Mangan 

125 

A  Militant  Poet 

135 

Thomas  Osborne  Davis 

149 

Gerald  Griffin 

168 

Callanan,  the  Bard  of  Gougaune  Barra 

186 

Irish  Balladry 

197 

Doctor  Maginn 

203 

Note  on  Grantley  Berkley 

232 

Father  Prout 

236 

Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan 

267 

NOVA  HIBERNIA 


NOVA  HIBERNIA 

THE  first  hint  we  had  of  it  was  in  a 
manner  unlooked-for  enough.  My  old 
friend,  Captain  Costigan,  looked  in  at  the 
Cave  of  Harmony  the  other  night,  after  see- 
ing the  Fotheringay  home  from  one  of  her 
undoubted  triumphs.  I  should  mention  that 
she  had  just  come  in  from  the  provinces  and 
had  made  a  brilliant  rentree.  The  London 
critics  still  hesitated  as  to  the  true  value  of  her 
acting, — blinded  by  the  very  splendour  of  her 
"janius,"  as  Costigan  would  have  it, — but  in 
spite  of  their  flimsy  reservations,  she  went  on 
her  conquering  way. 

The  metropolis  was  now  at  her  feet. 
Never  did  she  seem  more  beautiful;  never 
was  her  impassive  self-content  more  strikingly 
manifest.  Her  admirers,  enviously  dubbed 
the  Costigan  claque,  called  it  a  divine  Ian- 


4  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

guor,  the  repose  of  genius  and  conscious 
power.  Her  detractors  affirmed  that  it  was 
mere  animal  stupidity;  that  she  continued  to 
act,  as  in  the  days  of  Mr.  Thackeray,  with  an 
utter  incapability  of  real  passion — some  of 
them  even  said,  with  a  very  slight  degree  of 
common  intelligence.  Howbeit,  the  Siddons 
herself  did  not  compel  all  suffrages,  and  as  the 
Captain  finely  said,  there  is  always  a  skulking 
cloud  whose  office  it  is  to  shut  out  the  sun — 
though,  perhaps,  the  moon  would  be  a  neater 
simile. 

On  this  night  of  my  story  the  Fotheringay 
had  played  Juliet  in  a  manner  worthy  of  the 
best  traditions  of  the  stage.  I  myself  had  it 
on  the  excellent  authority  of  the  Captain, 
whose  eyes  moistened  and  whose  tongue 
tripped  a  little  as  he  recounted  for  us  the  fer- 
vid encomiums  of  the  foyer.  A  whisper  went 
round  the  company  that  a  certain  young  gen- 
tleman of  good  family — a  Mr.  Pendennis,  I 
think,  and  a  nephew  of  the  famous  clubman 
— had  been  hard  hit  by  the  Fotheringay;  and 


NOVA  HIBERNIA  5 

it  was  added  that  the  eclat  of  this  night's 
performance  would  probably  clinch  the  con- 
quest. Captain  Costigan  hears  well  when  he 
likes,  but  of  this  piece  of  gossip  he  seemed 
discreetly  oblivious. 

Something  in  my  old  friend's  manner  be- 
tokened that  there  was  more  on  his  mind  than 
the  latest  triumph  of  his  gifted  daughter,  and 
we  were  soon  to  learn  what  it  was.  I  may 
say  that  the  late  Mr.  Thackeray,  in  his  me- 
moirs of  Captain  Costigan,  has  hinted  ob- 
scurely at  the  alleged  bibulous  propensities  of 
that  gallant  gentleman  and  soldier.  In  this  I 
am  afraid  Mr.  Thackeray,  with  all  his  genius, 
betrayed  the  insular  prejudice  of  his  nation. 
It  is  also  true  that  in  his  printed  recollections 
Mr.  Thackeray  (who  wrote  much  on  high  life 
and  plumed  himself  on  his  acquaintance  with 
gentility),  sometimes  fell  into  the  vulgar 
habit  of  referring  to  the  Captain  as  "Cos." 
The  familiarity  is  one  of  which  I  was  never  a 
witness,  and  I  doubt  if  Mr.  Thackeray  would 
have  taken  the  liberty  with  his  living  sub- 


6  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

ject  which  he  has  ventured  upon  in  the  me- 
moirs aforesaid. 

As  for  the  Captain's  drinking,  no  friend  to 
his  memory  would  dispute  that  he  took  his 
negus  like  a  man  and  a  gentleman  to  boot. 
Captain  Costigan  was  of  an  extreme  sensibil- 
ity (which,  indeed,  is  common  to  his  race), 
and  his  tears  flowed  easily  when  he  was  in  the 
drink.  But  if  this  is  to  form  an  indictment 
against  him,  you  will  be  making  a  sad  busi- 
ness of  history. 

The  word  recalls  me.  Captain  Costigan, 
after  comforting  himself  with  a  mixture 
steaming  hot  and  fragrant,  coughed  with  a 
slight  emphasis  that  the  company  might  note 
him,  and  then,  laying  a  hand  on  his  breast, 
said  in  a  tone  of  strong  feeling: 

"Gentlemen,  to-night  at  least  it  shall  not  be 
said  of  me,  as  of  Polonius  in  the  play,  'still 
harping  on  his  daughter.'  Gratifying  to  my 
pathernal  pride  as  are  these  testimonies  to  the 
histhrionic  janius  of  her  who  is  the  light  of  my 
life" — here  the  Captain  was  overcome  by  a 


NOVA  HIBERNIA  7 

natural  emotion,  but  gathering  himself  to- 
gether, went  on  bravely — "and  whose  tinder 
feet  I  have  guided  up  the  steep  iminence  of 
fame,  my  bosom  now  swells  with  a  weightier 
cause  of  joy.  It  is  not  for  Jack  Costigan  to 
boast,  gentlemen,  but  the  pathriot  comes  be- 
fore the  father.  Less  than  a  half  hour  ago  I 
had  it  from  my  brilliant  young  friend  'Boz' 
— I  should  say  Mr.  Charles  Dickens  of  the 
press — that  the  Ministry  has  brought  in  a  bill 
of  Home  Rule  for  Ireland,  which  is  accept- 
able to  all  factions  of  my  countrymen  at 
Westminster  save  the  few  who  can  pipe  to  no 
tune  less  thruculent  than  the  'Boyne  Water.' 
Gentlemen,  the  imperishable  glory  of  render- 
ing long  delayed  justice  to  my  counthry  has 
fallen  to  the  Tories,  in  spite  of  nearly  two 
centuries  of  hollow  profession  by  the  Whigs.* 
The  distinies  of  the  Briiish  Empire  are  se- 
cured by  this  act  of  a  magnanimous  policy. 

*  In  view  of  history  now  in  the  making,  this  trifling  error 
may  be  pardoned  the  speaker,  should  the  major  event  be 
fulfilled. 


8  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

I  call  on  you  to  fill  your  glasses  and  drink, 
without  heel-taps,  to  Nova  Hibernia!" 

A  burst  of  applause  followed  the  Captain's 
speech,  and  as  with  our  gallant  and  lamented 
friend,  it  was  always  a  word  and  a  song,  you 
may  be  sure  it  wasn't  long  before  he  gave  us 
in  his  best  voice  Ned  Lysaght's  fervid  ditty, 
"Our  Island."  And  how  the  glasses  rang 
and  the  lights  tipped  at  us  as  he  intoned  the 
sentiment  1 — 

For,  ah!  'tis  our  dear  native  island, 
A  fertile  and  fine  little  island. 

May  Orange  and  Green 

No  longer  be  seen 
Bestained  with  the  blood  of  our  island! 

Nor  did  we  let  him  off  with  that.  Indeed 
before  the  party  broke  up,  the  honest  Cap- 
tain had  quite  sung  himself  out.  But  I  shall 
not  soon  forget  how  he  trolled  the  "Monks  of 
the  Screw,"  and  we  made  a  chorus  of  it  that 
would  have  gladdened  the  heart  of  Prior 
Jack  Curran  himself. 


NOVA  HIBERNIA  9 

Ah,  me!  was  it  a  dream  what  the  Captain 
said  and  the  merry  company  pledged  in  the 
Cave  of  Harmony, — a  whimsical  dream  turn- 
ing a  fair  hope,  as  so  often  before,  into  loss 
and  derision?  God  forbid!  It  is  something 
to  have  lived  for  if  we  shall  see  that  People 
take  its  rightful  place  after  how  much  oppres- 
sion and  scorn  and  weary  misdirected  effort! 
If  this  thing  shall  be,  of  a  truth,  I  shall  hail 
as  its  first  sign  the  passing  of  that  species  of 
Irishman  whose  few  good  qualities  have  not 
weighed  with  the  amount  of  shame  he  has 
brought  upon  us.  He  does  not  show  himself 
so  often  in  real  life  to-day;  is  not  so  busy  pos- 
ing and  sentimentalising  as  of  yore;  now  play- 
ing the  buffoon  covetous  of  laughter  and  care- 
less of  ridicule,  and  anon  making  a  pitiful 
display  of  touched  dignity  or  wounded  pride. 
I  hope  it  may  not  be  long  ere  it  will  be  a 
genuine  curiosity  to  find  him  slobbering,  hec- 
toring, bragging  and  begging  in  the  merciless 
pages  of  Thackeray. 

It  seems  to  me  an  added  touch  of  mockery 


io  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

to  the  misfortunes  of  Ireland  that  a  maudlin 
patriotism  has  at  all  times  existed  as  a  libel 
on  the  national  character.  The  professional 
aspect  which  it  has  often  assumed,  the  postur- 
ing, bad  taste  and  rhetorical  extravagance 
which  have  always  marked  it,  have  never 
failed  to  draw  the  shafts  of  a  hostile  criticism, 
and  to  offer  a  fair  mark  for  the  humours  of 
caricature.  Both  have  overdone  their  work, 
but  it  cannot  be  denied  that  there  has  been  a 
basis  of  truth  for  the  libel.  No  Englishman 
ever  understood  the  Irish  character  better 
than  the  creator  of  Costigan — who,  by  the 
way,  is  not  offensive  on  the  score  of  patriotism. 
Few  writers  have  dealt  with  us  more  unspar- 
ingly, though  he  was  too  great  not  to  mingle  a 
certain  saving  kindness  with  his  sharpest 
satire.  He  might  have  been  more  kind  and 
more  just.  The  mind  which  conceived  Colonel 
Newcome,  the  "best  gentleman  in  fiction," 
was  easily  capable  of  it.  Major  O'Dowd 
will  hardly  serve  us  instead,  though  as  little 


NOVA  HIBERNIA  u 

pains  as  Thackeray  took  with  him,  he  is  worth 
most  of  the  Irishmen  in  fiction. 

Since  the  Celtic  Renaissance  began,  with 
its  deep  spiritual  and  patriotic  motive,  with 
its  literary  marvels  as  if  owing  to  a  new  de- 
scent of  Fiery  Tongues, — the  one  troubling  of 
the  pool  in  these  latter  years  so  barren  of  faith 
and  wonder, — the  critics,  so  long  hostile  or 
merely  contemptuous,  have  taken  to  con- 
sidering us  more  seriously.  This  rebirth  of 
genius  and  spirituality  has  served  Ireland 
well.  More  true  light,  more  education 
will  do  the  rest.  The  pitiable  subjection 
in  which  this  people  has  so  long  been  held, 
— of  its  own  loving,  ignorant  choice,  it  must 
be  said, — by  a  power  which  has  too  often 
mingled  politics  with  religion,  is  fast  giving 
way.  Nay,  in  a  vital  sense  it  is  already  dis- 
solved. Neither  this  power,  strong  in  the 
grace  of  age-long  reverence  and  fidelity,  nor 
any  other  on  the  earth,  will  ever  again  dare 
dictate  a  backward  step  to  a  people  pressing 


12  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

forward  to  the  goal  of  liberty.  History  will 
not  repeat  itself  in  this  regard  for  the  Irish 
people. 

•  •••••* 

So,  whether  you  call  it  a  dream  or  not,  I'll 
believe  it — yes,  as  though  Tim  Healy,  M.  P., 
instead  of  Costigan,  had  told  me.  The  re- 
frain of  Ned  Lysaght's  ditty  is  still  with  me — 
would  that  he  might  hear  it,  set  to  the  new 
tune  of  hope  and  promise!  And  so  to  con- 
clude, Sir — asking  a  fair  pardon  for  the 
few  political  observations  above  injected — I 
pledge  you  Captain  Costigan's  toast, 

Nova  Hibernia! 

With  this  addition, 

Esto  perpetual 


YEATS  AND  SYNGE 


THAT  the  truest  and  deepest  poetry  must 
often  seem  a  vanity  and  a  foolishness  to 
the  world  not  intimately  concerned  or  spirit- 
ually indifferent,  needs  not  to  be  proven: — it 
is  an  axiom  that  instantly  recalls  Wordsworth 
in  his  earlier  period,  and  even  more  aptly, 
Blake;  and  in  these  latter  days,  the  Irish  poets 
Yeats  and  Synge. 

Yeats  is  the  poet  of  the  banshee,  of  the  lep- 
rechaun, of  the  lonesome  Irish  wind,  of  the 
mystery  of  the  swaying  reeds,  the  murmuring 
pool,  and  of  all  that  uncharted  realm  of  the 
imagination  "where  there  is  nothing."  But 
he  is  a  poet,  don't  forget  that,  and  he  has  the 
real  frenzy,  instead  of  a  literary  attachment 
and  a  facility  of  making  rhymes.  Poetry 
may  be  mere  moonshine,  and  in  the  case  of 
Yeats,  it  is  perhaps  only  the  shadow  of  moon- 

13 


14  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

shine: — still  is  it  the  miracle  of  the  human 
mind,  the  most  authentic  proof  of  the  god 
within  us.  This  the  world  has  ever  felt,  for 
the  bearer  of  the  sacred  fire,  the  possessor  of 
the  true  poetical  gift,  has  always  held  the 
highest  place  in  the  intellectual  sphere. 

It  is,  however,  true  that  the  poet  threatens 
to  become  extinct,  like  the  dodo,  and  that  is 
the  best  possible  reason  why  you  should  make 
a  point  of  seeing  one  of  the  last  of  the  race. 
An  Irish  poet,  too,  for  in  spite  of  his  English 
preciosity  of  style,  Yeats  has  more  deeply  ex- 
plored the  sources  of  Irish  poetical  inspira- 
tion than  any  of  his  forerunners,  and  he  is 
without  a  living  rival.  I  do  not  agree  with 
the  too  fervid  admirers  of  Mr.  Yeats,  who 
would  place  him  even  above  Moore,  one  of 
the  world's  great  lyrists;  but  I  will  grant  that 
he  often  seems  more  spiritually  Irish.  His 
distinction  is  so  rare  indeed  and  the  quality  of 
his  work  so  far  removed  from  general  appre- 
ciation, that  one  is  puzzled  to  account  for  his 
extraordinary  vogue  among  his  compatriots. 


YEATS  AND  SYNGE  15 

Something  of  it  is  no  doubt  referable  to  the 
present  Celtic  renaissance  in  which  Mr.  Yeats 
has  borne  a  foremost  part  that,  even  more  than 
his  poetry,  commends  him  to  the  esteem  and 
gratitude  of  Ireland. 

But  it  is  as  a  poet  that  I  like  to  think  of 
him,  and  it  is  as  a  poet  that  you  will  be  glad 
to  hear  and  see  him.  Should  you  require  an 
introduction  to  his  work,  read  his  verses  about 
"the  old  priest  Peter  Gilligan,"  and  if  there 
be  a  soul  in  you,  it  will  respond  to  the  awe  and 
mystery  of  human  life,  the  deep  spiritual 
sense  of  common  things,  which  this  poet  is 
charged  to  interpret. 

Both  Yeats  and  Synge  have  left  the  beaten 
path  in  quest  of  themes  congenial  to  their 
talent.  They  have  intellectually  gone  far 
afield,  while  actually  remaining  amongst  and 
taking  their  subject-matter  from  their  own 
people.  Yet  there  is  nothing  unfamiliar,  at  a 
first  glance,  in  the  material  employed  by  Yeats 
and  Synge, — fairies  and  leprechauns  and  all 


16  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

manner  of  "little  people''  from  the  ancient 
popular  mythology;  legendary  ladies,  princes, 
heroes  and  champions;  fisher  folk,  farmers, 
herds,  beggars,  tinkers,  the  wayfarers  of  the 
road.  It  is  the  use  they  have  made  of  this 
material,  itself  a  trite  and  oft  turned  over 
stock,  that  has  dignified  their  productions 
with  the  sober  name  of  art.  And  surely  if 
literature  has  any  miracle  to  show  in  these 
days,  lacking  which  it  is  not  literature  but  a 
degraded  counterfeit, — it  need  not  go  beyond 
the  work  of  Yeats  and  Synge.  What  both 
men  have  had  the  courage  to  do  is  (in  the 
words  of  the  former)  to  "speak  of  their  emo- 
tions without  fear  or  moral  ambition,  to  come 
out  from  under  the  shadow  of  other  men's 
minds,  to  be  utterly  themselves."  Of  the  two, 
Yeats  is  the  longer  and  better  known  to  us  as 
a  poet  of  very  rare  spiritual  distinction: — 
years  ago  Arthur  Symons  praised  his  work  as 
more  thoroughly  fulfilling  an  austere  defini- 
tion of  poetry  than  that  of  any  contemporary. 
He  began  an  artist  and  it  would  be  hard  to 


YEATS  AND  SYNGE  17 

name  a  modern  poet  who  has  so  little  inferior 
work  to  reproach  him.  He  has  visited  and 
lectured  us,  and  his  work  is  known  to  the  culti- 
vated in  this  country. 

As  I  have  said,  Yeats  is  avowedly  given  to 
the  mystic  and  the  spiritual,  to  which  his 
Celtic  heritage  naturally  inclines  him;  and  he 
has  made  more  of  these  elements  than  any  pre- 
ceding Irish  poet.  Moore,  who  remains  un- 
rivaled as  a  lyric  melodist  singing  of  love  and 
patriotism  and  the  past  glories  of  Erin, 
scarcely  touched  these  rich  sources  of  the  new 
Irish  poetry: — he  lived  three-fourths  of  his 
life  out  of  Ireland  and  inevitably  his  work 
was  conceived  mainly  in  the  English  literary 
tradition.  There  were  rarer  treasures  at 
home,  as  we  have  since  discovered,  than  he 
went  questing  for  in  Khorassan  and  Cashmere. 

Yeats  is  easily  first  in  this  old  but  unworked 
province.  He  has  "staked  out  his  claim,"  as 
we  say,  and  made  it  his  own.  The  discern- 
ment which  he  thus  evinced  as  a  very  young 
man,  no  less  than  the  fine  confidence  in  his 


i8  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

own  powers  to  make  the  best  of  his  chosen 
poetical  domain,  is  not  the  least  notable  thing 
in  the  story.  There  is  something  alien  and 
un-Irish  in  the  calm,  consistent,  matter-of-fact 
way  that  Yeats  has  gone  to  work  to  realise 
upon  his  poetical  heritage;  but  this  is  doubt- 
less to  be  laid  to  the  account  of  early  English 
influences  and  associations.  Both  England 
and  Ireland,  though  not  of  course  in  equal 
measure,  went  to  the  making  of  the  poet  and 
artist  in  Yeats.  Ireland,  it  may  be  said,  gave 
the  vision  of  things  invisible  and  England  the 
discipline  and  restraint  without  which  the 
poet's  rarest  findings  were  frittered  away  in  a 
waste  of  words. 

Rare  poet  as  is  Yeats,  he  is  always  the 
conscious  artist,  in  his  prose  as  in  his  verse. 
One  could  scarcely  name  another  living 
writer  of  English  whose  prose  is  all  that 
prose  should  be  and  yet  so  worthy  of  a  poet. 
And  prose,  he  would  have  us  believe,  is  his 
left  hand.  Take  this  censure  upon  the  de- 
criers  of  Synge's  first  play: — "Some  spontane- 


YEATS  AND  SYNGE  19 

ous  dislike  had  been  but  natural,  for  genius 
like  his  can  but  slowly,  amid  what  it  has  of 
harsh  and  strange,  set  forth  the  nobility  of  its 
beauty  and  the  depth  of  its  compassion;  but 
the  frenzy  that  would  have  silenced  his 
master-work  was,  like  most  violent  things, 
artificial,  the  defense  of  virtue  by  those  that 
have  but  little,  which  is  the  pomp  and  gal- 
lantry of  journalism  and  its  right  to  govern 
the  word." — 

Or  this  exquisite  rebuke  to  moral  partisans 
and  casuists,  the  plague  of  Ireland: — "How 
can  one,  if  one's  mind  be  full  of  obstructions 
and  images  created  not  for  their  own  sake  but 
for  the  sake  of  party,  even  if  there  were  still 
the  need,  find  words  that  delight  the  ear,  make 
pictures  to  the  mind's  eye,  discover  thoughts 
that  tighten  the  muscles,  or  quiver  and  tingle 
in  the  flesh,  and  stand  like  St.  Michael  with 
the  trumpet  that  calls  the  body  to  resurrec- 
tion?" .  .  . 

Yeats,  though  a  Protestant  or  at  least  a  non- 
Catholic    (as   also  was   Synge),   has   had   to 


20  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

battle  with  the  mighty  prejudice  that  in  Ire- 
land will  not  tolerate  a  man's  taking  original 
ground  as  against  the  traditional  or  uni- 
versally sanctioned  position.  Nobly  he  refers 
to  this  when  he  says  that  "though  I  was  never 
convinced  that  the  anatomies  of  last  year's 
leaves  are  a  living  forest,  or  thought  a  con- 
tinual apologetic  could  do  other  than  make 
the  soul  a  vapour  and  the  body  a  stone,  or  be- 
lieved that  literature  can  be  made  by  anything 
but  by  what  is  still  blind  and  dumb  within 
ourselves,  I  have  had  to  learn  how  hard  in  one 
who  lives  where  forms  of  expression  and 
habits  of  thought  have  been  born,  not  for  the 
pleasure  of  begetting,  but  for  the  public  good, 
is  that  purification  from  insincerity,  vanity, 
malignity,  arrogance,  which  is  the  discovery 
of  style." 

In  Ireland  the  religion  and  the  moral  atti- 
tude of  the  great  majority,  as  well  as  the  his- 
torical position  sustaining  or  thought  to  be  sus- 
taining these,  are  against  experiments  in  art 
that  involve  any  cleavage  with  "things  settled 


YEATS  AND  SYNGE  21 

for  good  and  all,"  and  especially  for  the  good 
of  the  Catholic  laity.  Moore,  although  a 
loyal  Catholic,  was  never  entirely  comfortable 
with  this  sentiment,  and  he  has  suffered  from 
it;  Gerald  Griffin,  rather  than  take  issue  with 
it,  hid  his  great  powers  in  a  monastery;  Banim 
became  the  object  of  its  anathema  and  aver- 
sion. These  are  but  a  few  instances  snatched 
at  random.  Hence  Yeats  tells  us  that  the 
man  who  doubted  the  fabulous  ancient 
(Irish)  kings  running  up  to  Adam,  or  found 
but  mythology  in  some  old  tale,  was  as  hated 
as  if  he  had  doubted  the  authority  of  Scrip- 
ture. Another  instance  was  the  riot  in  the 
Dublin  theatre  over  the  use  of  the  word 
"shift"  (shirt)  in  Synge's  play,  as  a  slander 
upon  Ireland's  womanhood! 

Yeats  is  a  good  fighter  himself,  as  may  be 
surmised  from  the  extracts  given,  ready  in  the 
furtherance  of  his  ideals  to  "attack  things 
that  are  as  dear  to  many  as  some  holy  image 
carried  hither  and  thither  by  some  broken 
clan."     I  think  it  was  well  for  him  all  the 


22  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

same  that  he  was  not  born  and  bred  in  the 
Catholic  majority,  where  the  heart  of  him 
might  have  been  broken  in  his  efforts  to  prove 
that  there  is  any  real  source  of  poetical  in- 
spiration or  literary  enterprise  or  historical 
pride  than  the  Church  and  the  Saints  and  the 
legendary  kings  in  Ireland. 

In  his  poetical  one-act  drama,  "The  Green 
Helmet,"  full  of  power  and  wizardry,  Yeats 
exhibits  that  divine  folly  of  the  poet  which 
transcends  the  best  wisdom  of  the  world.  Its 
lesson  should  be  close  taken  to  heart  in  Ire- 
land, maugre  the  Church,  the  moral  attitude 
and  the  historical  position: — in  Ireland  where 
the  poet  tells  us. 

Neighbour  wars  on  neighbour,  and  why  there  is  no  man 

knows, 
And  if  a  man  is  lucky,  all  wish  his  luck  away, 
And  take  his  good  name  from  him  between  a  day  and  a 

day! 

Mr.  Yeats  is,  of  course,  speaking  of  a  leg- 
endary Ireland,  not  later,  it  may  be  supposed, 


YEATS  AND  SYNGE  23 

than   the  Tuatha-da-Danaan,   those   fine  old 
contemporaries  of  Pharaoh!  .  .  . 

In  "Kathleen-ni-Houlihan"  Yeats  has  ex- 
pressed the  destiny  of  Ireland  with  the  sim- 
plicity of  genius  and  at  the  same  time  a  poetic 
power  of  vision  and  feeling  which  lifts  it  far 
above  the  current  dramatic  literature  of  our 
day.  This  Playlet  would  alone  justify  the 
Irish  literary  movement  which  has  caused 
priests  and  "patriots"  so  much  anxiety.  It  is  a 
spiritual  treasure,  immortal  as  anything  that 
has  come  out  of  Ireland! 


Of  Synge,  friend  and  co-worker  of  Yeats, 
one  must  speak  less  confidently  to  an  Amer- 
ican audience.  Just  now  attention  is  fixed 
upon  him  by  reason  of  his  recent,  untimely 
death,  and  in  no  small  degree  by  the  splendid 
tribute  of  his  surviving  friend  and  peer. 
Yet  of  the  two,  waiving  the  specific  gifts  of 
poetry  and  craftsmanship,  I  am  not  sure  but 
that  Synge  has  achieved  the  more  difficult  and 


24  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

original  work.  He  has  certainly  startled 
Irishmen  far  more  and  is  a  tougher  bone  of 
contention  amongst  them.  Perhaps  also  it 
must  be  admitted  that  few  besides  Irishmen 
will  trouble  to  try  and  understand  him.  For 
his  work  involves  a  reading  and  comprehen- 
sion of  the  Irish  peasant  character  which  goes 
deep  under  the  surface — is,  in  truth,  to  all  in- 
tents and  purposes,  a  new  reading.  A  thing 
both  new  and  true  is  very  rare  indeed,  and 
the  finding  of  such  a  treasure-trove  has  been 
the  literary  fortune  of  J.  M.  Synge. 

Nobody  ever  wrote  Irish  peasant  dialect 
like  Synge,  and  yet,  reading  it,  one  is  pene- 
trated with  a  sense  of  its  verity,  as  well  as 
amazed  at  its  lyric  beauty,  passion,  tenderness, 
hatred,  scorn,  invective, — the  entire  gamut  of 
human  feeling.  That  the  Irish  are  a  fanci- 
ful people  is  tolerably  well  known,  and 
Synge's  work  will  bring  home  to  many  the 
regrettable  fact  that  they  lose  much  by  trans- 
plantation; while  the  critic  will  be  forced  to 
admit   that   a    fiery,   sincere,    passionate    and 


YEATS  AND  SYNGE  25 

spiritual  people,  who  have  remained  simple 
by  the  grace  of  God,  can  speak  a  natural 
poetry  in  their  daily  lives  that  owes  nothing  to 
literary  forms  or  traditions.  No  Irish  writer 
has  ever  made  us  understand  this  like  Synge, 
and  so  completely  has  he  succeeded  that  we 
are  apt  to  forget  the  genius  that  stands  behind 
his  puppets,  and  in  the  reading  we  go  back 
again  and  again  to  marvel  at  this  wonderful 
peasant  speech — this  dialect  that  in  the  essen- 
tials of  true  poetry  puts  to  blush  so  many 
pages  of  "fine  literature!"  So  deep  is  the 
illusion  produced  that  we  take  his  word  for  it 
when  the  artist  assures  us  that  the  wildest 
sayings  in  his  "Playboy  of  the  Western 
World"  are  tame  indeed  compared  with  the 
fancies  one  may  hear  at  any  little  hillside  cot- 
tage of  Geesala,  or  Carraroe,  or  Dingle  Bay. 
On  reflection,  we  see  that  the  originality  of 
the  artist  is  in  no  wise  questioned — everything 
has  undergone  the  transmuting  touch  of 
genius. 

Mr.    Yeats     pronounces     this     play    "the 


26  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

strangest,  the  most  beautiful  expression  in 
drama  of  that  Irish  fantasy  which,  overflow- 
ing through  all  Irish  literature  that  has  come 
out  of  Ireland  itself,  is  the  unbroken  charac- 
ter of  Irish  genius." 

This  is  high  praise  and  less  competent 
critics  than  Yeats  are  even  more  eulogistic. 
I  believe,  however,  that  Synge  was  but  find- 
ing himself  and  that  we  should  have  had 
greater  work  from  him  had  he  not  been  cut 
off  under  his  fortieth  year.  So  I  think  highly 
of  the  sombre  little  drama,  "Riders  to  the 
Sea,"  but  I  should  hesitate  to  call  it,  in  the 
language  of  an  Irish  eulogist,  "a  tragedy 
which,  for  dramatic  irony  and  noble  pity,  has 
no  equal  among  its  contemporaries."  That  it 
is  a  masterpiece  of  its  kind  and  one  of  the 
finest  fruits  of  modern  Irish  literary  genius, 
may  be  granted  without  difficulty.  The  true 
tragic  note  has  seldom  been  more  effectively 
struck  than  in  the  final  scene,  with  the  old 
mother  mourning  the  last  of  her  sons  taken  by 
the  cruel  sea. 


YEATS  AND  SYNGE  27 

MAURYA 

[Drops  Michael's  clothes  across  Bartley's  feet,  and 
sprinkles  the  Holy  Water  over  him.] 
It  isn't,  that  I  haven't  prayed  for  you,  Bartley,  to  the 
Almighty  God.  It  isn't  that  I  haven't  said  prayers  in 
the  dark  night  till  you  wouldn't  know  what  I'd  be  say- 
ing; but  it's  a  great  rest  I'll  have  now  and  great  sleep- 
ing in  the  long  nights  after  Samhain,  if  it's  only  a  bit 
of  wet  flour  we  do  have  to  eat,  and  maybe  a  fish  that's 
stinking. 

CATHLEEN 

It's  getting  old  she  is,  and  broken. 

NORA  [In  a  whisper  to  Cathleen] 

She's  quiet  now  and  easy;  but  the  day  Michael  was 
drowned  you  could  hear  her  crying  out  from  this  to  the 
spring  well.  It's  fonder  she  was  of  Michael,  and  would 
anyone  have  thought  that? 

CATHLEEN  [Slowly  and  clearly] 

An  old  woman  will  soon  be  tired  with  anything  she 
will  do,  and  isn't  it  nine  days  herself  is  after  crying  and 
keening,  and  making  great  sorrow  in  the  house? 

MAURYA 

[Puts  the  empty  cup  mouth  downwards  on  the  table, 
and  lays  her  hands  together  on  Bartley's  feet] 
They're  all  together  this  time,  and  the  end  is  come. 


28  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

May  the  Almighty  God  have  mercy  on  Bartley's  soul, 
and  on  Michael's  soul,  and  on  the  souls  of  Shaemas  and 
Patch,  and  Stephen  and  Shawn  (bending  her  head)  ; 
and  may  He  have  mercy  on  my  soul,  Nora,  and  on  the 
soul  of  everyone  is  left  living  in  the  world. 

[She  pauses,  and  the  keen  rises  a  little  more  loudly 
from  the  women,  then  sinks  away] 

maurya  [Continuing] 

Michael  has  a  clean  burial  in  the  far  north  by  the  grace 
of  the  Almighty  God.  Bartley  will  have  a  fine  coffin 
out  of  the  white  boards,  and  a  deep  grave  surely.  What 
more  can  we  want  than  that?  No  man  at  all  can  be 
living  for  ever,  and  we  must  be  satisfied. 

Synge  was  in  Yeats's  description  of  him  "a 
shifting,  silent  man,  full  of  hidden  passion, 
who  loved  wild  islands  because  there,  set  out 
in  the  light  of  day,  he  saw  what  lay  hidden  in 
himself."  There  is  a  pathos  in  his  own  life- 
story, — bitter  and  lonely  and  sad,  with  the 
blighting  presage  of  early  death  upon  it, — 
that  strangely  contrasts  with  the  wild  and 
boisterous  humour  of  his  plays.  This,  how- 
ever, is  but  to  say  that  he  was  truly  of  the  soil 
himself  and  one  with  his  people. 


YEATS  AND  SYNGE  29 

For  the  moment  the  world  is  extraordi- 
narily moved  and  curious  about  Synge:  as  is 
usually  seen  when  it  loses  unwittingly  a  gen- 
ius. 


3o  NOVA  HIBERNIA 


II 

THE  row  over  Synge's  "Playboy"  in  New 
York  and  elsewhere  called  forth  a  great 
deal  of  newspaper  discussion,  but  I  have  seen 
nothing  that  went  to  the  root  of  the  matter. 
There  was  much  calling  of  names,  as  proper 
to  an  Irish  dispute,  and  an  apparent  sophisti- 
cation of  the  argument  on  both  sides.  The 
debate  elicited  a  characteristic  tirade  from 
Bernard  Shaw,  the  best  part  of  which  was  his 
fling  at  the  pseudo-Irish  of  America  who,  ut- 
terly unqualified  to  judge  themselves,  protest 
against  Synge's  dramatic  picture  of  native 
Irish  character  and  conduct.  But  even  Mr. 
Shaw  missed  or  purposely  evaded  the  under- 
lying motive  of  the  hue-and-cry  against  Synge 
and  the  ultimate  point  at  issue. 

That  motive  is  religious,  or  rather  eccle- 
siastical in  its  nature,  and  it  has  been  pro- 


YEATS  AND  SYNGE  31 

nounced  from  the  very  beginning  against  the 
whole  literary  movement  of  which  Synge  was 
a  part.  Such  of  my  readers  as  are  familiar 
with  that  movement,  more  properly  described 
as  a  spiritual  and  intellectual  ferment,  or  who 
have  looked  into  George  Moore's  lately  pub- 
lished book,  "Hail  and  Farewell,"  need  no  in- 
formation on  this  head.  The  trouble  with 
the  "Playboy"  is  the  trouble  with  everything 
Irish  which  is  so  unfortunate  as  to  come  under 
the  ban  of  priestly  censure.  Nowhere  in  the 
world  are  priestly  sensibilities  so  acute  and 
easily  wounded  as  in  Ireland,  and  justly  so, 
since  nowhere  in  the  world  has  the  priest  so 
complete  a  dominion  over  the  popular  mind. 
Be  it  remembered  also  that  there  is  no 
jealousy  like  Irish  jealousy,  so  cordial  and 
implacable,  so  cheerfully  dissembled,  open  as 
the  sun  and  hidden  as  the  grave.  (Paradoxi- 
cally, it  is  no  less  true  that  there  is  no  gener- 
osity like  Irish  generosity:  that  is  why  it  is  so 
hard  to  understand  us!)  But  of  all  kinds  of 
Irish  jealousy  the  most  formidable  is  that  of 


32  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

the  priests,  in  any  matter  affecting  their  spirit- 
ual leadership  and  control  of  the  Irish  people. 
Not  to  have  grasped  this  fact  is  to  have  missed 
the  chief  clue  to  that  perplexed  and  checkered 
history. 

Every  Irishman  is  an  aristocrat,  says  Lecky. 
The  Roman  Catholic  hierarchy  are  the  true 
aristocracy  of  Ireland,  congenial  because 
sprung  from  the  soil,  naturally  intolerant  be- 
cause of  their  lowly  origin,  and  venerable 
from  ages  of  undisputed  supremacy.  The 
Irish  people  have  wandered  their  full  stint  in 
the  deserts  of  misery  and  oppression,  solaced 
like  Israel,  with  the  belief  that  they  were  ful- 
filling a  peculiar  providence  of  God.  To 
weep  by  the  waters  of  Babylon,  to  wear  the 
chains  of  foreign  taskmasters,  such  was  the 
destiny  of  that  older  Chosen  People  to  whom 
the  Irish  have  been  so  fond  of  likening  them- 
selves. Heaven  knows  they  were  richly  jus- 
tified in  making  the  sad  parallel.  For  cen- 
turies the  faithful  Irish  have  dreamed  only  of 


YEATS  AND  SYNGE  33 

the  Kingdom  of  God,  looking  away  with  the 
eyes  of  the  spirit  from  the  unhappy,  beautiful 
land  of  their  earthly  exile  to  their  assured  in- 
heritance beyond  the  skies.  Ireland  has  for- 
tified her  hope  with  dreams,  and  visions,  and 
prophecies,  all  in  the  inspired  Jewish  man- 
ner and  all,  it  would  seem,  speaking  without 
sanctification,  to  as  vain  purpose.  It  was  a 
kind  of  national  plagiarism  induced  by  the 
ecclesiastical  habit  that  has  so  rooted  itself  in 
the  blood  of  the  Irish  people.  So  it  has  been 
said  that  the  religion  of  the  Jews  was  not  so 
much  a  religion  as  a  national  misfortune.  In 
no  country  in  the  world  is  the  ecclesiastical 
spirit  so  strong — it  has  killed  off  patriotism, 
literature,  enterprise  and  initiative  of  every 
kind  in  the  least  degree  incompatible  with  its 
claims  and  prerogatives.  Since  the  Act  of 
Union  the  priests  have  been  the  strongest  part 
of  the  British  garrison  in  Ireland,  content  that 
England  should  govern  the  country  pro 
forma,  while  they  were  suffered  to  rule  the 


34  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

Irish  people  de  facto.  And  the  Church  has 
flourished  in  Ireland,  though  the  people  have 
dwindled  and  decayed  or  fled  beyond  seas,  so 
that  old  prophecies  as  to  the  country  ever 
being  freed  and  made  a  nation  again  are  little 
now  regarded.  There  is  scarce  a  smoulder- 
ing hint  of  the  glorious  flame  of  'Forty-eight, 
the  last  genuine  outburst  of  the  long  vaunted 
national  spirit,  and  the  people  seem  about  to 
be  reconciled  to  their  destiny.  The  destiny 
of  everlasting  union  with  England?  Oh,  no! 
— the  true  destiny  of  Ireland,  say  the  pious 
ones,  and  those  who  rule  opinion,  is  to  remain 
the  Chief  Seminary  of  the  Catholic  Church — 
a  distinction  which  she  may  well  claim  to-day. 
And  there  is  hardly  enough  of  the  old  fiery 
but  futile  patriotism  left  in  the  country  to 
raise  a  protest.  The  priests  are  suffered  to 
have  their  way — and  the  people  emigrate! 
Yet  all  may  well  be,  in  that  phrase  so  conse- 
crated by  Irish  usage,  "for  the  greater  glory  of 
God." 

Synge  was  neither  a  Catholic  nor  a  Protes- 


YEATS  AND  SYNGE  35 

tant! — he  was  an  artist,  and  he  did  his  work 
like  an  artist,  not  like  a  Protestant  or  a  Cath- 
olic, in  a  country  where  religion  dominates 
the  humblest  mind.  The  result  was  astonish- 
ing: Ireland  had  produced  a  genius  unawares, 
but  as  is  customary  where  mediocrity  has 
long  been  the  rule,  opinion  was  divided  as  to 
whether  he  merited  praise  or  a  halter.  In 
the  heat  of  the  contention  he  died  suddenly — 
one  may  be  allowed  to  say  most  lamentably — 
and  the  battle  is  going  on  over  his  bones. 

Now  it  will  be  asked,  how  did  Synge  run 
foul  of  Irish  ecclesiasticism  in  his  plays? 
Simply  by  departing  from  the  long  prevalent 
caricatures  of  fiction  and  comedy,  the  Larry 
Brannigans  and  Pat  Molloys,  and  making 
his  studies  with  artistic  severity  from  the  life. 
The  Irishman, — the  commonest  Irishman, 
since  Mr.  Shaw  will  not  allow  us  the  term 
"peasant," — is  far  more  complex  and  there- 
fore less  easily  characterised  than  we  might 
believe  from  accepted  types  in  play  and 
novel.     He  is  not  at  all  the  invariably  good- 


36  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

natured   clown   or   Handy  Andy   as   therein 
depicted;  but  quite  the  contrary,  is  a  being  of 
moods   and   passions,   of  contrasting  yet  hu- 
manly  consistent   traits,    simple   yet   shrewd, 
candid    yet    cunning,    kind    yet    vindictive, 
drunken  maybe,  yet  devout,  such  as  Synge  has 
observed    and    painted    him.     Had    he    been 
content  merely  to  revamp  the  old  scarecrows 
of  Irish  comedy,  his  name  had  perhaps  never 
crossed  the  Channel,  not  to  say  the  Atlantic. 
In  one  of  Synge's  plays  a  drunken  tinker, 
his  mistress  and  his  hag  of  a  mother  do  some 
irreverence  to  a  priest  who  reflects  no  great 
honour    upon    the    Order    of    Melchizedek. 
The  whole  scene  and  conception  are  "low," 
it   may  be   granted,   but  strictly  within    the 
province  of  dramatic  art.     Synge  has  as  valid 
a  right  to  his  Michael  Byrne  as  Shakespeare 
to  his  Christopher  Sly.     So  in  the  "Playboy" 
a  simpleton  of  a  fellow  has  some  speeches  in 
which  he  invokes  the  "Holy  Father"  and  the 
"Scarlet  Cardinals  of  the  Court  of  Rome." 
In  the  given  situation  nothing  could  be  more 


YEATS  AND  SYNGE  37 

exquisitely  comic  and  at  the  same  time,  more 
natural  in  the  mouth  of  an  omadhawn. 
There  is  also  in  this,  as  in  other  plays  by 
Synge,  much  loose  talk  of  God  and  the  Virgin 
and  the  Saints,  not  as  intended  irreverence 
but  as  a  transcript  of  the  popular  speech. 
Poetic  beauty  is  scarcely  ever  absent  from 
these  speeches  and  only  an  ear  sharpened  for 
offence  would  take  umbrage  at  them.  Synge 
never  appears  in  his  plays  as  a  scoffer  at 
things  sacred  or  religious,  nor  is  there  a  trace 
of  polemics  in  any  of  them.  He  limited  him- 
self strictly  to  his  artistic  province,  reproduc- 
ing life  and  character  as  he  found  them  in 
years  of  the  most  familiar  association  with  the 
people.  His  little  book  on  the  Arran  Islands 
fully  reveals  his  method  in  all  its  anxious  in- 
tegrity, and  it  contains  the  germ  of  his  plays. 
Thus  we  have  the  head  and  front  of  Synge's 
offending  before  us.  His  plays  do  not  flatter 
priestly  sensibilities — they  even  wound  ec- 
clesiastical coquetry  in  a  land  where  the 
priest  is  supreme. 


THOMAS  MOORE 

Oh,  forgive,  if  while  list'ning  to  music  whose  breath 
Seemed  to  circle  his  name  with  a  charm  against  death, 
He  should  feel  a  proud  Spirit  within  him  proclaim — 
"Ev'n  so  shalt  thou  live  in  the  echoes  of  Fame: 

"Ev'n  so,  tho'  thy  memory  should  now  die  away, 
'Tiuill  be  caught  up  again  in  some  happier  day; 
And  the  hearts  and  the  voices  of  Erin  prolong 
Thro'  the  answering  future  thy  NAME  and  thy  song!" 

— Irish  Melody. 

THE  usage  of  biography  requires  me  to 
state,  at  the  outset,  that  the  sweetest  of 
all  Irish  poets  and  English  lyrists,  Thomas 
Moore,  was  born  in  Dublin  on  May  28,  1779, 
and  died  at  Sloperton  Cottage,  Wiltshire,  in 
England,  in  the  year  1852. 

A  charming  story  is  preserved  of  a  grand 
reception  held  at  the  Lord  Lieutenant's  house 

38 


THOMAS  MOORE  39 

in  Dublin  when  the  last  century  was  still  in 
its  teens.  Among  the  guests  was  a  lady  whose 
husband,  a  British  military  officer,  had  been 
ordered  on  that  very  evening  to  rejoin  his 
regiment  for  active  service.  Europe  was 
filled  with  the  alarum  of  war.  The  forces  of 
fate  were  closing  in  upon  the  Corsican  and 
the  terrific  struggle  of  the  "last  days"  was  at 
hand.  Many  were  the  gentle  hearts  that 
shared  a  dumb  sense  of  dread,  a  fear  that 
shrank  from  expression,  with  her  who  amid 
the  brilliant  throng  in  the  Viceroy's  palace 
sate  preoccupied  with  her  own  sadness.  And 
you  will  not  marvel  at  this — a  common  inci- 
dent of  the  time — knowing  how  they  danced 
and  revelled  on  the  very  eve  of  Waterloo. 

In  such  a  mood,  we  are  told,  the  lady  thus 
suddenly  bereaved,  wondered  pettishly  at  the 
extraordinary  deference  which  the  whole 
company  united  in  paying  to  a  little  gentle- 
man who  came  late  in  the  evening,  and  whose 
simple  black  dress  contrasted  strongly  with 
the  gold  lace  of  the  viceregal  staff  and  the 


40  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

garish  splendour  of  the  military  corps.  Pres- 
ently the  little  gentleman  was  led  to  the  piano. 
After  preluding  a  moment  he  struck  the  keys 
with  resounding  harmony — 

Go  where  glory  waits  thee, 

But  while  fame  elates  thee, 

Oh,  still  remember  me! 

Ah,  she  listened  now  with  a  flying  heart  to 
words  that  made  poignantly  real  for  her  the 
sentence  of  separation.  Then  the  matchless 
voice,  thrilling  with  power  and  sweetness, 
sank  to  the  softest  note  of  sympathy: — 

When  around  thee  dying, 
Autumn  leaves  are  lying, 

Oh !  then  remember  me. 
And  at  night  when  gazing 
On  the  gay  hearth  blazing, 

Oh !  still  remember  me. 

Still  the  wondrous  voice  sang  on,  a  mur- 
mur of  polite  applause  rising  at  each  cessa- 
tion of  the  music.  But  ere  the  final  bravos 
came,    one    overburthened    heart    had    given 


THOMAS  MOORE  41 

such  token  of  its  emotion  as  to  gain  a  lasting 
place  in  the  bright  tradition  of  the  poet-min- 
strel. 

The  singer  was  Thomas  Moore;  the  song 
one  of  the  earliest,  in  point  of  time,  of  the 
immortal  Irish  Melodies.  Many  years  after- 
ward the  clever  American,  N.  P.  Willis,  fell 
under  the  same  spell  at  the  house  of  Lady 
Blessington  in  London.  Willis  tells  us  that 
he  had  heard  of  women  fainting  at  a  song  of 
Tom  Moore's,  but,  judging  from  the  effect  on 
an  old  stager  like  himself,  he  thought  a 
gentler  heart  should  have  broken.  A  more 
illustrious  witness,  the  author  of  "Childe 
Harold,"  was  wont  to  weep  over  the  Irish 
Melodies  quite  as  sincerely  as  did  the  lady  at 
the  Lord  Lieutenant's  whose  story  has  come 
down  to  us. 

There  was  in  truth  a  vast  deal  of  sentiment 
in  the  world  when  George  the  Third  was 
king  and  even  up  to  the  accession  of  the 
Fourth  of  that  august  line.  A  great  English 
writer   has    described    Moore    as    twittering 


42  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

away  in  anger  from  the  latter  royal  personage 
upon  his  recanting  the  liberal  views  which  he 
had  formerly  professed  and  which  had  given 
a  fallacious  hope  to  the  friends  of  Ireland. 
The  touch  is  one  of  the  neatest  of  Mr.  Thack- 
eray's satirical  humour,  but  it  is  scarcely  a  half 
truth.     Moore  himself  tells  us: 

"Luckily  the  list  of  benefits  showered  upon 
me  from  that  high  quarter  may  be  despatched 
in  a  few  sentences.  At  the  request  of  the 
Earl  of  Moira,  one  of  my  earliest  and  best 
friends,  His  Royal  Highness  graciously  per- 
mitted me  to  dedicate  to  him  my  translation 
of  the  Odes  of  Anacreon.  I  was  twice,  I 
think,  admitted  to  the  honour  of  dining  at 
Carlton  House;  and  when  the  Prince,  on  his 
being  made  Regent  in  1811,  gave  his  memor- 
able fete,  I  was  one  of  the  crowd — about 
fifteen  hundred  I  believe — who  enjoyed  the 
privilege  of  being  his  guests  on  that  occasion." 

So  the  story  of  Moore's  intimacy  with 
Brummel's  "fat  friend,"  whom  he  has  so  pun- 
gently    satirised    in    "The    Twopenny    Post 


THOMAS  MOORE  43 

Bag,"  must  be  dismissed,  malgre  Mr.  Thack- 
eray, as  a  myth.  Yet  it  is  in  a  degree  true  to 
the  sentiment  or,  rather,  bathos  of  that  queer 
Georgian  period.  The  French  Revolution 
had  been  followed  by  an  aftermath  of  hyste- 
ria which  was  fearfully  prolonged.  In  all 
the  literature  of  the  time  there  is  an  overplus 
of  sentiment  and  declamation.  The  advo- 
cates of  reaction,  including  such  contrasted 
types  as  the  great  Burke  and  "Carotid-artery- 
cutting"  Castlereagh,  are  quite  as  strenuous 
in  this  regard  as  the  upholders  of  liberty  and 
equality.  Even  the  all-conquering  Napo- 
leon writes  his  bulletins  in  the  manner  and  al- 
most in  the  measure  of  the  long  since  dis- 
credited Ossian. 

Barrington's  vivid  sketches  of  society  in 
the  Irish  Capital  show  how  powerfully  the 
emotional  Celtic  temperament  was  acted 
upon  by  the  prevailing  spirit.  (Alas!  was 
there  not  a  bloody  and  abortive  revolution 
to  be  traced  to  the  same  influence?)  So  we 
may  be  sure  that  for  such  a  rara  avis  as  a 


44  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

poet  who  could  sing  his  own  verses,  there 
were  triumphs  to  be  snatched  in  this  fervid 
Irish  society,  as  well  as  in  the  grander  circles 
across  the  Channel,  which  at  the  moment  of 
their  winning  must  have  seemed  more  en- 
viable than  all  the  awards  of  gods  and  col- 
umns. Never  was  a  poet  so  popular  with 
the  gentler  sex.  Even  the  Quaker  women, 
with  their  natural  and  acquired  distaste  for 
the  erotic  Muse,  quite  fell  in  love  with  him, 
and  paid  him  the  unheard  of  compliment  of 
soliciting  "a  line  of  thine  with  thy  name  to 
it."  The  women  on  the  Dublin  Packet — I 
think  most  of  them  were  Irish,  however, — 
kissed  him  almost  to  death,  on  a  certain  occa- 
sion. Small  blame  to  them!  The  grand 
dames  of  the  English  aristocracy,  duchesses 
and  countesses  galore,  if  you  care  for  them — 
went  mad  over  the  Irish  Anacreon.  Read 
his  Journal  if  you  wish  to  know  how  they 
pursued  him  with  invitations  which  even  Mr. 
Brummel  might  have  envied  before  his  fatal 
rupture  with  George  the  Admired. 


THOMAS  MOORE  45 

We  look  back  now  upon  that  Era  of  Senti- 
ment with  a  curious  mixture  of  contempt  and 
wonder,  and  the  critics  have  got  into  a  habit 
of  unduly  depreciating  its  literary  product. 
I  think  I  hear  these  learned  gentry  exclaim 
that  stories  of  Tom  Moore's  strumming  and 
humming  have  little  to  do  with  a  serious  es- 
timate of  the  poet.  Granted,  but  to  be  se- 
rious is  not  wholly  our  concern;  and  so  I 
think  these  testimonies  are  worth  recounting, 
for  they  help  us  to  realise  in  some  sort  the  liv- 
ing magic  of  that  wonderful  minstrelsy,  the 
exquisite  union  of  poesy  and  music  in  the 
genius  of  Thomas  Moore. 

II 

POET  AND  PATRIOT 

THE  wise  Greeks  fabled  of  one  of  their 
poets  that,  while  yet  an  infant  in  the 
cradle,  a  swarm  of  bees  settled  on  his  lips,  at- 
testing the  lyric  gift  with  which  the  Muses 
had  endowed  the  happy  babe.     It  is  easy  for 


46  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

us  who  have  known  the  spell  of  that  witch- 
ing Irish  minstrelsy,  to  believe  that  the  fairies 
did  their  portion  at  the  cradle  of  Tom 
Moore.  One  brought  the  gift  of  music, 
another  whispered  the  strange  secret  of  poesy, 
and  a  third  fairy  that,  with  the  loss  of 
many  things,  has  never  left  the  Green  Isle — 
gave  him  the  infallible  recipe  of  Irish  wit. 
And  the  fairy  that  came  last  was  not  least,  as 
our  poet  himself  well  knew  when  he  wrote — 

Wit  a  diamond  brought, 
Which  cut  his  bright  way  through. 

Literary  fashions  have  doubtless  changed 
since  the  early  years  of  the  last  century  when 
young  ladies  at  boarding  school,  like  Miss 
Rebecca  Sharp  and  Miss  Amelia  Sedley, 
dreamed  only  of  a  lover  with  the  "dear  Cor- 
sair expression,  half  savage,  half  soft,"  and 
when  Moore's  Irish  Melodies  were  the  reign- 
ing favourites  in  Belgravia  and  Bloomsbury. 
Even  in  this  country  the  strains  of  the  newly 
awakened  harp  of  Erin  were  heard,  and  in- 


THOMAS  MOORE  47 

deed  the  poet  had  here  preceded  his  song. 
We  read  that  the  great  Mr.  Jefferson  for- 
gave our  poet  some  sharp  iambics, — which 
Moore's  visit  to  this  country  in  1803  had 
elicited, — and  that  the  first  of  American 
statesmen  often  refreshed  his  leisure  with  the 
riper  and  better  work  of  his  critic.  We  have 
long  since  detected  the  error  of  taste  in  the 
pseudo-Oriental  school  of  English  poetry,  so 
greatly  the  vogue  in  the  first  quarter  of  the 
last  century,  but  it  must  fairly  be  said,  that 
the  best  critical  opinion  has  varied  little,  if 
at  all,  as  to  the  high  and  enduring  merits  of 
the  Irish  Melodies.  Byron's  praise,  that 
they  are  worth  all  the  epics  which  have  ever 
been  written,  may  easily  be  granted  a  hyper- 
bole; but  surely  they  have  added  more  to  the 
delight  of  mankind.  It  was  happily  said  of 
our  poet,  that  he  would  go  down  to  posterity 
with  the  Rose  in  his  button-hole — the  rose  of 
his  perfect  song,  let  me  say,  which  receives 
new  beauty  and  lustre  with  every  gifted 
voice  that  is  born  into  the  world. 


48  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

There  are  poets  who  have  sung  to  the  peo- 
ple, and  there  are  poets  who  have  sung  only 
for  poets.  These  may  well  be  deemed  the 
rarest  singers  whose  every  auditor  bears  him- 
self the  laurel  and  the  lyre.  It  is  of  one  who 
in  his  highest  moments  of  rapture  sang  to 
both, — poets  and  people,  the  vocal  and  the 
voiceless, — that  I  propose  to  speak  in  the  fol- 
lowing pages. 

Also  it  seems  needful  to  say  that  no  poetic 
fame  holds  so  ardent  and  secure  as  that  which 
is  entwined  with  the  spirit  of  an  oppressed 
nationality.  The  man  whom  old  Fletcher  of 
Saltoun  knew  was  wiser,  in  our  reckoning, 
than  some  sages  whose  names  are  remem- 
bered. For  the  songs  are  ever  more  than  the 
laws  of  a  people. 

To  him  who  reads  history  aright,  Rouget 
de  Lisle  was  a  greater  general  than  the  victor 
of  Hohenlinden,  a  mightier  conqueror  than 
the  Man  of  Austerlitz.  The  assemblies  that 
followed  the  convocation  of  the  States-Gen- 
eral of  France  in  the  memorable  year  1789, 


THOMAS  MOORE  49 

debated  the  rights  of  man.  History- making 
did  not  fairly  begin  until,  coming  up  from 
the  South,  the  gaunt  soldiers  of  Barbaroux 
fiercely  chanted  those  rights  in  the  streets  of 
Paris.  The  greater  the  measure  of  tyranny, 
the  more  heroic  and  unconquerable  the  spirit 
of  an  oppressed  people,  the  nobler  is  the 
fame  and  the  loftier  the  inspiration  of  the 
poet  who  feeds  the  hatred  of  that  tyranny  till 
"time  at  last  sets  all  things  even,"  and  sancti- 
fies the  zeal  of  that  spirit  unto  liberty  and  re- 
generation. 

And  though  the  greatest  poet  may  be  he 
whose  song  is  poured  out  for  all  mankind,  yet 
dearer  is  the  strain  breathed  to  one  votive 
altar  of  patriotism.  The  fame  of  Thomas 
Moore,  like  the  "light  in  Kildare's  holy 
fane,  which  burned  thro'  long  ages  of  darkness 
and  storm,"  glows  unquenchably  in  the  eternal 
aspiration  of  the  Irish  heart.  Not  vainly  has 
he  sung: — 

Dear  Harp  of  my  Country!  in  darkness  I  found  thee, 
The  cold  chain  of  silence  had  hung  o'er  thee  long, 


50  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

When  proudly,  my  own  Island  Harp,  I  unbound  thee, 
And  gave  all  thy  chords  to  light,  freedom,  and  song! 

The  warm  lay  of  love  and  the  light  note  of  gladness 
Have  walcen'd  thy  fondest,  thy  liveliest  thrill ; 

But  so  oft  hast  thou  echo'd  the  deep  sigh  of  sadness, 
That  ev'n  in  thy  mirth  it  will  steal  from  thee  still. 

Dear  Harp  of  my  Country!  farewell  to  thy  numbers, 

This  sweet  wreath  of  song  is  the  last  we  shall  twine ! 
Go,  sleep  with  the  sunshine  of  Fame  on  thy  slumbers, 

Till  touch'd  by  some  hand  less  unworthy  than  mine. 
If  the  pulse  of  the  patriot,  soldier  or  lover, 

Have  throbb'd  at  our  lay,  'tis  thy  glory  alone; 
I  was  but  as  the  wind,  passing  heedlessly  over, 

And  all  the  wild  sweetness  I  waked  was  thy  own. 

Viewed  simply  in  their  relation  to  litera- 
ture, we  shall  easily  tolerate  even  the  more 
violent  aspects  of  Irish  patriotism.  Because 
John  Mitchel  felt  strongly  he  wrote  words 
which  hold  us  yet  with  a  compelling  power. 
Because  Clarence  Mangan's  heart  yearned 
for  the  Eire  of  his  visions, — 

"the  clime  and  land 
Of  Cahal-M6r  of  the  wine-red  hand," — 


THOMAS  MOORE  51 

he  has  gained  a  place  unique  among  Irish 
poets.  The  note  of  revolt  made  possible 
that  splendid  efflorescence  of  genius  which 
we  call  the  "New  Ireland  movement."  So 
the  passing  of  the  "force  men"  from  the 
scene  of  nationalist  endeavour  may  be  regret- 
ted on  good  poetical  grounds,  even  though  it 
be  hailed  by  the  lovers  of  peace  (some  of 
whom,  it  need  not  be  gainsaid,  love  Ireland 
too)  as  a  sign  of  the  better  era  that  is  always 
just  dawning  for  the  unhappy  island.  And, 
truly,  in  the  cold  decline  of  that  fervid  pa- 
triotism which  once  united  the  "sea-divided 
Gael,"  and  which  poured  itself  out  in  lavish 
aid  of  every  Fenian  plot,  of  every  hare- 
brained project  of  liberation  or  agitation, — 
in  this  altered  feeling,  let  me  say,  may  we  not 
fear  the  progressive  decadence  and  ultimate 
death  of  that  which  has  seemed  most  vital  in 
the  Irish  character,  and  which  has  thrown 
around  the  race  in  its  periods  of  darkest  op- 
pression a  glory  that  has  ever  sustained  and 
exalted    the    national    hope?     Consider    the 


52  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

men  of  'Forty-eight  and  the  parliamentary 
patriots  of  a  later  day!  What  a  falling  off 
from  that  high  spirit,  that  unselfish  devotion 
which  .breathed  in  the  songs  of  Thomas 
Davis,  sweeping  away  every  barrier  before 
them  with  the  irresistible  attack  of  Celtic 
genius!  What  a  change  from  the  heroic,  if 
illusory,  ideals  of  patriotism  that  inspired 
the  clanging  speech  of  Meagher  of  the 
Sword!  One  grows  old  and  the  world  seems 
to  shrink  and  fade  in  thinking  of  it. 

There  was  something  so  warm  and  sublime  in  the  core 
Of  an  Irishman's  heart  that  I  envied  thy  dead! 

Alas!  the  new  Irish  Avatar  is  different 
enough  from  that  which  provoked  the  fierce 
anger  of  Byron.  It  asks  for  tears  rather  than 
condemnation.  It  signifies  an  exhausted  pa- 
triotism; a  people  still  faithful  indeed,  but 
weary  of  promises;  more  willing  than  ever 
to  be  guided  by  moderate  counsels;  no  longer 
breaking  out  into  those  sudden  fits  of  rage  or 
frenzy    that    startled    the    oppressor    in    an 


THOMAS  MOORE  53 

earlier  day;  shaping  themselves,  as  some 
would  say,  for  the  hour  when  British  mag- 
nanimity shall  endow  them  with  a  measure 
of  justice. 

Ill 

THE  POET'S  CENSORS 

I  KNOW  full  well  there  are  those  who 
will  utterly  dissent  from  my  deliberate 
conviction  that  Moore  ranks  with  the  best  and 
purest  patriots  of  his  country.  Many  have 
been  influenced  by  the  cant  which  has  gath- 
ered about  the  subject,  and  have  been  induced 
to  form  a  judgment  as  superficial  as  it  is  false. 
Perhaps  the  true  explanation  of  this  prejudice 
which  has  ever  insidiously  sought  to  withhold 
the  most  precious  part  of  our  poet's  glory,  lies 
deeper.  The  curse  of  jealousy  and  mistrust 
somehow  clings  to  the  most  generous  and 
gifted  people  under  the  sun.  It  is  the  dark 
thread  that  runs  through  all  their  history  of 
glory  and  sorrow.     Sometimes  the  national 


54  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

defect  is  not  without  humorous  expression,  as 
when  Gavan  Duffy  naively  tells  us  that  the 
great  O'Connell  was  never  quite  able  to  mas- 
ter his  envy  of  Brian  Boru!  In  very  recent 
years  we  have  seen  this  racial  curse  blighting 
the  fame  and  life  itself  of  the  man  who,  since 
Henry  Grattan,  brought  his  country  nearest 
to  the  portals  of  freedom.  History  has  al- 
ready written  her  verdict  on  that  great  trag- 
edy, but  no  one  deeply  acquainted  with  the 
Irish  character,  wrill  take  it  to  be  the  last  ex- 
ample. "How  oft  has  the  Banshee  cried!" 
So,  as  an  Irishman,  I  regret,  while  I  do  not 
wonder,  that  it  is  the  fashion  among  literary 
men  of  my  own  race  to  disparage  the  patriot- 
ism of  Moore.  Some  of  them,  indeed,  would 
appear  to  belittle  his  poetry,  and  for  the  fairest 
as  well  as  kindliest  judgments  on  both,  we 
must  look  to  un-Irish  sources.  The  centenary 
of  Moore's  birth  occurred  in  1879  and  there 
is  not  yet  an  adequate  biography  of  him  by  an 
Irish  hand.  I  find,  on  the  contrary,  that 
every  petty  and  unworthy  thing  which  could 


THOMAS  MOORE  55 

be  said  of  him — the  small  change  of  malice 
and  envy — has  been  carefully  collected  and 
preserved  by  Irish  chroniclers.  His  patriot- 
ism, which  gave  to  the  Irish  people  a  legacy 
of  song  that  has  not  its  like  in  literature,  has 
been  viciously  impugned  on  no  better  ground 
than  that  his  genius,  education,  wit  and  social 
qualities  caused  him  to  be  honourably  courted 
by  the  proudest  aristocracy  in  the  world.  Yet 
not  an  iota  of  proof  can  be  adduced  that 
Moore  held  this  position  by  the  slightest  com- 
promise of  his  always  intense  but  thoroughly 
reasoned  patriotism. 

For  a  literary  sign  of  this  national  jealousy, 
note  how  Father  Prout  and  Dr.  Maginn  lam- 
pooned Moore  with  less  wit  than  severity,  and 
indeed  conducted  themselves  with  a  show  of 
something  very  like  blackguardism.  There 
are  also  hints  of  the  rancour  ecclesiastical — 
referable  perhaps  to  a  certain  Letter  ad- 
dressed to  the  Catholics  of  Dublin,  or  to  the 
fact  that  Moore  suffered  his  Protestant  wife 
to  bring  up  their  children  in  the  Established 


56  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

Church — but  I  pass  them  by  in  silence.  I 
may  say  here  that  Moore's  theology  was  good 
enough  for  the  great  Archbishop  McHale, 
and  he  wrote  a  book  in  defence  of  his  religion, 
which  may  perhaps  atone  for  his  compliance 
with  his  wife's  scruples. 

The  favourite  text  with  all  who  cry  down 
Moore's  sterling  patriotism  and  disparage  the 
solid  worth  of  his  character,  is  the  idle  sar- 
casm attributed  to  Byron, — "Tommy  dearly 
loves  a  lord."  It  is  hard  to  kill  the  lie  in  an 
epigram,  but  let  us  at  least  set  against  this  the 
tribute  of  Samuel  Carter  Hall,  who  knew  our 
poet  well : 

"Amid  privations  and  temptations,  the  al- 
lurements of  grandeur  and  the  suggestions  of 
poverty,  he  preserved  his  self-respect;  be- 
queathing no  property,  but  leaving  no  debts; 
having  had  no  testimonial  of  acknowledg- 
ment or  reward;  seeking  none,  nay,  avoiding 
any;  labouring  ardently  and  honestly  for  his 
political  faith,  but  never  lending  to  party 
what  was   meant   for   mankind;    proud    and 


THOMAS  MOORE  57 

rightly  proud  of  his  self-obtained  position,  but 
neither  scorning  nor  slighting  the  humble  root 
from  which  he  sprung." 

The  learned  Dr.  Parr  in  bequeathing  a  ring 
to  Moore  commended  his  "original  genius,  in- 
dependent spirit  and  incorruptible  integrity." 

Lord  John  Russell,  the  poet's  literary  exec- 
utor, who  was  Premier  of  England,  observed 
of  Moore  that  "a  man  who  was  courted  and 
esteemed  by  the  Marquis  of  Lansdowne,  Mr. 
Canning,  Sir  Robert  Peel,  Mr.  Rogers,  Syd- 
ney Smith,  Sir  Walter  Scott  and  Lord  Byron, 
— must  have  had  social  as  well  as  literary 
merits  of  no  common  order."  And  these 
words  may  be  taken  to  convey  more  than  they 
actually  express,  since  while  there  is  abun- 
dant proof  of  Lord  Russell's  sincere  friend- 
ship for  the  poet,  no  evidence  is  lacking  that 
the  noble  lord  utterly  mistook  his  own  taste 
and  capacity  for  the  function  with  which 
Moore  intrusted  him. 

It  is  but  a  truism  to  say  that  the  world  is 
not  in  the  habit  of  applying  the  stern  tests  of 


58  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

political  or  even  moral  consistency  to  a  great 
poet.  It  laughs  with  Horace  over  his  flight 
from  Philippi, — relicta  non  bene  parmula. 
It  smiles  indulgently  at  the  trimming  of 
Dryden  and  easily  condones  the  prostitution 
of  Addison's  pen  to  the  purposes  of  party. 
Nay,  it  even  compounds  the  felonies  of  Villon, 
that  immortal  jailbird  of  old  Paris.  There- 
fore, I  would  gladly  hold  a  brief  for  Moore 
on  the  score  of  moral  or  political  delinquency, 
if  his  critics  and  censors  could  make  out  a 
case  against  him.  This  they  cannot  do.  His 
religion  was,  simply,  that  God  is  Love.  His 
life  was  blameless  by  the  ordinary  human 
standards,  and  nothing  in  that  life  was  more 
admirable  than  his  consistent  patriotism. 

Historians  tell  us  that  the  Irish  Melodies 
had  as  large  a  share  as  O'Connell's  mighty 
influence  in  shaping  British  sentiment  for  the 
grant  of  Catholic  emancipation.  If  this  be 
so,  the  world  has  seen  nothing  like  it  since  the 
Sicilian  conquerors  struck  the  chains  from 
their  Greek  captives,  as  told  in  classic  story. 


THOMAS  MOORE  59 

It  gives  a  glory  unique  to  the  brow  of  the 
Irish  poet  and  ranks  him  with  the  benefactors 
of  his  race. 

I  would  cite  the  "Rebuke  to  the  Neapoli- 
tans" as  marking  the  strength  of  Moore's 
poetical  expression  and  the  vigour  of  his  po- 
litical creed.  These  verses  speak  well  for  the 
fibre  of  the  man  whose  patriotism  is  so  often 
slurred  by  ill-judging  censors  of  his  own  race. 
How  many  who  lightly  criticise  Moore  in  his 
character  of  patriot  know  that  his  "Fables  for 
the  Holy  Alliance,"  dedicated  to  Lord  Byron, 
elicited  the  threat  of  a  government  prosecu- 
tion? It  will  easily  be  granted  that  John 
Mitchel,  that  "last  of  the  patriots,"  was  not  a 
type  of  the  rosewater  revolutionist.  Yet  the 
patriotism  of  our  poet  passed  current  with 
Mitchel,  who  has  recorded  a  significant  trib- 
ute to  the  effect  of  Moore's  poetical  satires 
directed  against  British  misgovernment  in 
Ireland.  The  English  critic  Hazlitt,  who 
was  no  lover  of  our  poet,  says  of  these  poetic 
arsenals  of  wit  and  sarcasm: — 


60  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

"He   (Moore)   has  wit  at  will  and  of  the 

first  quality.  His  satirical  and  burlesque 
poetry  is  his  best;  it  is  first-rate.  His  light, 
agreeable  and  polished  style  pierces  through 
the  body  of  the  court  .  .  .  shows  up  the  little- 
ness of  the  great,  and  spears  a  phalanx  of 
statesmen  with  its  glittering  point  as  with  a 
diamond." 

Let  us  not  forget  that  Byron  wrote,  while 
the  "loyal"  Irish  people  and  clergy,  with 
O'Connell  at  their  head,  were  acclaiming 
George  the  Fourth  on  his  visit  to  the  unhappy 
island — 

But  if  aught  in  my  bosom  could  quench  for  an  hour 
My  contempt  for  a  nation  which,  servile  tho'  sore, 

Which,  tho'  trod  like  the  worm,  will  not  turn  upon  power, 
'Tis  the  glory  of  Grattan,  the  genius  of  Moore! 

The  truth  is  that  Ireland  has  had  few 
patriots  (of  anything  like  equal  prominence) 
so  consistent  in  high  principle  as  her  greatest 
poet.  It  would  be  easy  to  name  some,  and 
these    eminent   enough,    who   began   with    a 


THOMAS  MOORE  61 

dream  of  revolution,  and,  if  they  did  not  at- 
tain the  dubious  distinction  of  hiding  their 
heads  in  a  coronet  (as  Sheridan  finely  said), 
at  least  acquired  an  honourary  initial  or  two, 
and  anchored  their  old  age  in  the  secure  Al- 
satia  of  political  conformity.  I  do  not  con- 
demn them.  The  world  may  be  as  often 
wrong  about  its  heroes  as  about  the  victims  of 
its  harshest  judgments.  I  simply  maintain 
my  position — which  to  the  reader  of  Irish 
sympathies  should  be  worth  maintaining — 
that  Anacreon  Moore  was  as  sound  a  patriot 
as  the  Green  Island  has  over  produced,  not 
barring  the  great  O'Connell,  or  even  the 
justly  lamented  Brian  Boru. 

IV 

THE  LYRIST 

MOORE  has  long  overpassed  his  cen- 
tury, and  he  remains  one  of  the  most 
popular  of  poets.  I  shall  presume  to  set  forth 
my  own  humble  views  touching  the  value  of 


62  NOVA  HIBERXIA 

his  work,  the  sources  of  its  unfading  charm, 
and  the  rank  which  he  seems  destined  to  hold 
in  literature. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  he  is  the  prince  of 
English  lyrists.  In  poetry  we  require  the 
miracle,  says  Emerson.  To  my  mind  the  best 
of  Moore's  lyrics  never  fail  to  fulfil  this  con- 
dition. Our  literature  has  nothing  to  com- 
pare with  their  distinctive  grace,  tenderness, 
pathos  and  joy, — and  the  singer  himself 
"singing  as  if  he  never  could  grow  old."  The 
only  adequate  description  of  these  songs  must 
be  sought  in  themselves,  with  the  heart- 
searching  commentary  of  their  own  music. 

Music,  oh  how  faint,  how  weak 

Language  fades  before  thy  spell! 
Why  should  Feeling  ever  speak 

When  thou  canst  breathe  her  soul  so  well? 

It  would  not  be  easy,  indeed,  to  account  for 
the  singular  superiority  of  Moore  as  a  lyrical 
poet — a  superiority  often  only  to  be  felt,  not 
put  into  words — without  the  clue  which  his 


THOMAS  MOORE  63 

gifts  of  music  supply.  He  had,  as  Balfe  *  the 
composer  testifies,  an  endowment  of  music  pe- 
culiarly his  own ;  a  delicacy  of  ear  rarely  found 
even  among  professed  virtuosi,  which,  with 
his  exquisite  poetical  genius,  enabled  him  to 
make  such  adaptation  of  verse  to  melody  as 
had  never  been  known  before,  and,  as  the 
highest  artistic  achievement  in  kind,  is  not 
likely  to  be  repeated.  He  himself  tells  us: 
"I  only  know  that  in  a  strong  and  inborn  feel- 
ing for  music  lies  the  source  of  whatever 
talent  I  may  have  shown  for  poetical  compo- 
sition; and  that  it  was  the  effort  to  translate 
into  language  the  emotions  and  passions  which 
music  appeared  to  me  to  express,  that  first  led 
to  my  writing  any  poetry  at  all  deserving  of 
the  name." 

But,  after  all,  I  regard  Moore's  gift  of  mu- 
sic as  merely  supplementary  to  his  poetical  en- 
dowment. During  his  life,  indeed,  it  counted 
for  much  more  than  would  be  considered  in  a 
critical  estimate  of  his  work  to-day.     A  cloud 

•Author   of   "The   Bohemian   Girl,"   etc. 


64  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

of  witnesses,  many  of  them  among  the  bright- 
est names  of  the  last  century,  record  the  charm 
and  delight  of  the  poet's  own  singing.  Byron 
pointed  out  that  "Moore  has  a  peculiarity  of 
talent,  or  rather,  talents, — poetry,  music,  voice, 
all  his  own,  and  an  expression  in  each  which 
never  was  or  will  be  possessed  by  another." 
No  one  could  hope  to  write  songs  like  Moore, 
he  said.  Shelley  proudly  confessed  his  inferi- 
ority to  Moore,  and  happily  called  him  "the 
sweetest  lyrist  of  Ierne's  saddest  wrong."  And 
glorious  old  Kit  North  (Prof.  John  Wilson) 
with  a  generosity  rare  in  a  Scotchman,  ad- 
mitted that  "of  all  the  song-writers  that  ever 
warbled  or  chanted  or  sung,  the  best,  in  our 
estimation,  is  verily  none  other  than  Thomas 
Moore."  Coleridge  allowed  that  Moore  had 
written  more  beautiful  lyrics  than  any  poet 
who  had  ever  lived.  "It  would  be  a  delight- 
ful addition  to  life,"  wrote  the  great  Walter 
Scott,  after  a  visit  from  our  Irish  song  bird, 
"if  Thomas  Moore  had  a  cottage  within  two 
miles  of  me."     And  the  poet's  gifted  coun- 


THOMAS  MOORE  65 

tryman,  Samuel  Lover,  fitly  described  the 
Irish  Melodies  as  "that  work,  not  only  the 
crowning  wreath  of  its  author,  but  among  the 
glories  of  the  land  which  gave  him  birth." 

The  purest  and  most  perfect,  then,  of 
Moore's  lyrics  can  be  fully  interpreted  only 
through  the  medium  of  their  own  Irish  mu- 
sic.— 

Sweet  air,  how  every  note  brings  back 
Some  sunny  hope,  some  day-dream  bright 

That  shining  o'er  life's  early  track, 
Filled  even  its  tears  with  light. 

The  secret  of  Moore  is  in  these  perfect  lines, 
a  secret  that  I  believe  died  with  him.  This 
truth,  that  the  poetry  of  the  Melodies  is 
rightly  inseparable  from  the  music, — a  truth 
little  appreciated  by  the  casual  reader,  has  led 
our  poet  to  say: 

"Accustomed  as  I  have  always  been  to  con- 
sider my  songs  as  a  sort  of  compound  crea- 
tions, in  which  the  music  forms  no  less  essen- 
tial a  part  than  the  verses,  it  is  with  a  feeling 
which  I  can  hardly  expect  my  un-lyrical  read- 


66  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

ers  to  understand,  that  I  see  such  a  swarm  of 
songs  as  crowd  these  pages  all  separated  from 
the  beautiful  airs  which  have  formed,  hitherto, 
their  chief  ornament  and  defence — their  decus 
et  tutamen.  .  .  .  Those  occasional  breaches 
of  the  laws  of  rhythm  which  the  task  of  adapt- 
ing words  to  airs  demands  of  the  poet,  though 
frequently  one  of  the  happiest  results  of  his 
skill,  become  blemishes  when  the  verse  is  sep- 
arated from  the  melody." 

Yet  I  would  point  out  that,  rich  as  are  the 
Irish  lyrics,  divested  of  the  harmonies  with 
wrhich  they  are  endued  by  the  genius  of  that 
unrivalled  music,  it  is  thus  we  may  better  ap- 
preciate the  poetic  miracle,  unheightened  by 
the  spell  of  that  kindred  art  to  which  our  poet 
owed  so  much  of  his  inspiration. 

I  have  already  given  my  estimate  of 
Moore's  sterling  patriotism — it  actually  seems 
a  good  Irish  bull  that  the  author  of  the  Mel- 
odies should  require  a  character  in  this  respect 
— and  I  have  noted  the  bad  taste  of  some  of 
his  scribbling  countrymen   in   aspersing   the 


THOMAS  MOORE  67 

motives  of  a  man  who  might  have  commanded 
the  riches  of  the  great  and  honoured,  yet  died 
in  a  simple  poverty,  leaving,  as  was  said, 
neither  wealth  nor  debts  behind  him. 

In  this  little  poem  the  national  fate,  the  Evil 
Genius  of  Ireland,  usually  invoked  by  his- 
torians to  point  the  moral  of  her  sad  history,  is 
touched  with  words  that  burn  as  they  fall 
from  the  poet's  pen: 

Weep  on,  weep  on,  your  hour  is  past, 

Your  dreams  of  pride  are  o'er; 
The  fatal  chain  is  round  you  cast, 

And  you  are  men  no  more. 
In  vain  the  hero's  heart  hath  bled, 

The  sage's  tongue  hath  warned  in  vain: 
Oh,  Freedom!  once  thy  flame  hath  fled, 

It  never  lights  again! 

Weep  on, — perhaps  in  after  days, 

They'll  learn  to  love  your  name; 
While  many  a  deed  may  wake  in  praise, 

That  long  hath  slept  in  blame. 
And  when  they  tread  the  ruin'd  Isle 

Where  rest  at  length  the  lord  and  slave, 


68  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

They'll  wondering  ask,  how  hands  so  vile 
Could  conquer  hearts  so  brave. 

"  'Twas  fate,"  they'll  say,  "a  wayward  fate 

"Your  web  of  discord  wove; 
"And  while  your  tyrants  joined  in  hate, 

"You  never  joined  in  love: 
"But  hearts  fell  off,  that  ought  to  twine, 

"And  man  profaned  what  God  had  given, 
"Till  some  were  heard  to  curse  the  shrine 

"Where  others  knelt  to  heaven !" 

Nothing  in  the  history  of  the  Irish  people 
is  so  remarkable  as  their  attachment  to  the 
faith  which  Patrick  gave  them.  They  have 
clung  to  it  as  even  a  more  precious  thing  than 
liberty  itself,  and  indeed  there  are  not  wanting 
historians  to  tell  us  that  in  rejecting  the  Refor- 
mation,* the  Irish  people  ignorantly  threw 
away  their  chance  of  national  salvation. 
However  that  may  be — and  there  is  really  not 
much  room  to  dispute  it — the  world  must  yield 
its  tribute  of  admiration  to  such  heroic  con- 
stancy.    It    is    this    high    sentiment    of    un- 

*  Rejecting   it   from   England,   bien   entendu. 


THOMAS  MOORE  69 

changed  and  unchangeable  devotion  that 
breathes  in  one  of  the  noblest  of  the  Melodies, 
"The  Irish  Peasant  to  His  Mistress," — signi- 
fying allegorically  the  ancient  faith  of  Ire- 
land, and  summing  up  in  a  few  lines  the  story 
of  ages  of  persecution. 

Through  grief  and  through  danger  thy  smile  hath  cheer'd 

my  way, 
Till  hope  seemed  to  bud  from  each  thorn  that  round  me 

lay; 
The  darker  our  fortune,  the  brighter  our  pure  love  burned, 
Till  shame  into  glory,  till  fear  into  zeal  was  turned ; 
Yes,  slave  as  I  was,  in  thy  arms  my  spirit  felt  free, 
And  bless'd  even  the  sorrows  that  made  thee  more  dear  to 

me. 

Thy   rival  was   honor'd   while   thou  wert   wrong'd   and 

scorn'd, 
Thy  crown  was  of  briers,  while  gold  her  brows  adorn'd  ; 
She  woo'd  me  to  temples  while  thou  lay'st  hid  in  caves, 
Her   friends  were   all   masters,   while   thine,   alas,   were 

slaves ; 
Yet  cold  in  the  earth,  at  thy  feet,  I  would  rather  be, 
Than  wed  what  I  loved  not,  or  turn  one  thought  from 

thee ! 


Jo  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

They  slander  thee  sorely  who  say  thy  vows  are  frail — 
Hadst  thou  been  a  false  one  thy  cheek  had  been  less  pale. 
They  say,   too,  so  long  thou  hast  worn  those  lingering 

chains, 
That  deep  in  thy  heart  they  have  printed  their  servile 

stains. 
Oh !  foul  is  the  slander — no  chain  could  that  soul  subdue — 
Where  shineth  thy  spirit,  there  liberty  shineth  too! 

The  beauty  of  Moore's  similes,  springing 
up  ever  new,  like  the  almond  flower  in  the 
Eastern  legend,  is,  after  the  music  of  his  verse, 
his  most  distinctive  excellence.  No  other 
poet  is  so  happy  and  rich  in  this  the  rarest 
treasure-trove  of  poetic  fancy.  "I  had  rather 
have  a  new  symbol  for  my  thought,"  says 
Emerson,  "than  the  suffrage  of  Kant  or 
Plato."  Moore  has  hardly  a  verse  without  a 
simile,  and  he  never  rides  a  jaded  metaphor. 

An  admirable  instance  is  furnished  by  the 
following  Irish  Melody,  which  we  shall  search 
the  more  deeply  for  the  secret  of  its  beauty  and 
charm  that  we  know  it  to  have  been  a  prime 
favourite  of  Lord  Byron's. 


THOMAS  MOORE  71 

As  a  beam  o'er  the  face  of  the  waters  may  glow, 
While  the  tide  runs  in  darkness  and  coldness,  below, 
So  the  cheek  may  be  tinged  with  a  warm  sunny  smile, 
Tho'  the  cold  heart  to  ruin  runs  darkly  the  while. 

One  fatal  remembrance,  one  sorrow  that  throws 
Its  bleak  shade  alike  o'er  our  joys  and  our  woes, 
To  which  life  nothing  darker  or  brighter  can  bring, 
For  which  joy  has  no  balm  and  affliction  no  sting — 

Oh!  this  thought  in  the  midst  of  enjoyment  will  stay 
Like  a  dead,  leafless  branch  in  the  summer's  bright  ray; 
The  beams  of  the  warm  sun  play  round  it  in  vain, 
It  may  smile  in  his  light,  but  it  blooms  not  again. 

Even  his  prose  sparkles  with  this  sort  of 
ornament,  though  one  feels  sometimes  that  it 
were  better  reserved  for  his  poetry.  In  this, 
one  of  the  most  delicate  and  beautiful  of  Irish 
love  songs,  the  poet  plays  with  his  images, — 
one  in  every  line — as  if  such  rare  Parnassian 
mintings  were  the  current  coin  of  all  rhymers. 

Lesbia  hath  a  beaming  eye, 

But  no  one  knows  from  whom  it  beameth ; 
Right  and  left  its  arrows  fly, 

But  what  they  aim  at  no  one  dreameth. 


72  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

Sweeter  'tis  to  gaze  upon 

My  Nora's  lid  that  seldom  rises; 

Few  its  looks,  but  every  one, 
Like  unexpected  light,  surprises! 

Oh,  my  Nora  Creina,  dear, 
My  gentle,  bashful  Nora  Creina, 
Beauty  lies 
In:  many  eyes, 
But  love  in  yours,  my  Nora  Creina. 

Lesbia  wears  a  robe  of  gold, 

But  all  so  close  the  nymph  hath  laced  it, 
Not  a  charm  of  beauty's  mould 

Presumes  to  stay  where  Nature  placed  it. 
Oh !  my  Nora's  gown  for  me, 

That  floats  as  wild  as  mountain  breezes, 
Leaving  every  beauty  free 

To  sink  or  swell  as  Heaven  pleases. 

Yes,  my  Nora  Creina,  dear, 
My  simple,  graceful  Nora  Creina, 

Nature's  dress 

Is  loveliness — 
The  dress  you  wear,  my  Nora  Creina. 


THOMAS  MOORE  73 

Lesbia  hath  a  wit  refined, 

But  when  its  points  are  gleaming  round  us, 
Who  can  tell  if  they're  designed 

To  dazzle  merely,  or  to  wound  us? 
Pillow'd  on  my  Nora's  heart 

In  safer  slumber  Love  reposes — 
Bed  of  peace!  whose  roughest  part 

Is  but  the  crumpling  of  the  roses. 

Oh,  my  Nora  Crcina,  dear, 
My  mild,  my  artless  Nora  Creina! 

Wit,  though  bright, 

Hath  no  such  light 
As  warms  your  eyes,  my  Nora  Creina! 

I  am  aware  of  a  certain  literary  prejudice 
against  mere  song-writing,  but,  though  Moore 
has  suffered  from  it,  especially  in  the  present 
generation,  it  in  no  way  justly  applies  to  him. 
Before  he  came  the  songs  were  made  for  the 
sound  and  never  aimed  at  the  sense,  poetical 
or  otherwise.  It  remained  for  him  who  has 
been  called  the  "Rossini  of  musicians  and  the 
humming  bird  of  poets,"  to  bring  to  the  art 
of  the  song-writer  powers,  I  had  almost  said, 


74  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

unmatched  before  in  poetry,  and  a  musical 
feeling  and  perception  so  refined  as  to  evade 
the  analysis  of  words. 

They  called  him  Bacchus  in  his  brilliant 
prime,  his  fine  head  with  its  clustering  tendrils 
and  his  lustrous  eyes  alive  with  the  fires  of 
genius,  suggesting  a  likeness  to  the  classic  deity 
of  mirth  and  good  fellowship  no  less  than  his 
drinking  songs,  which  I  take  to  be  the  finest 
in  the  world.  In  these  "short  swallow 
flights"  of  lyric  song  Moore  has  never  been 
approached  for  lightness  of  touch,  felicity  of 
phrase,  and  that  liquid  flow  of  versification, 
at  once  metre  and  music,  of  which  he  alone 
among  poets  possessed  the  secret.  To  these 
virtues  and  qualities  may  be  added  such  an  ex- 
pression of  the  festive  spirit,  classic  without 
being  coarse,  Bacchanalian  without  running 
into  excess,  which  is  also  a  peculiar  attribute 
of  Moore's.  The  delighted  reader, — or  bet- 
ter, hearer,  for  these  poems  should  always  be 
sung  in  order  to  be  felt  at  their  full  value, 
yields  willingly  to  the  seductive  spell  of  the 


THOMAS  MOORE  75 

minstrel,  credulous  even  to  believe  and  follow 
when  the  latter  promises  him — 

"We'll  take  a  flight  to  Heaven  to-night 
And  leave  dull  earth  behind  us/" 

There  are  no  happier  examples  of  Moore's 
unrivalled  genius  as  a  song-writer  than  these 
lyrics  of  a  refined  conviviality,  but  I  shall  not 
cite  any  of  them  here, — I  choose  rather  to 

1 

show  him  in  graver  mood,  a  mood  which  is 
often  ignorantly  or  invidiously  denied  to  his 
scope  as  an  artist.  The  poem — the  song — is 
such  as  only  Moore  could  have  written. 

Oh,  banquet  not  in  those  shining  bowers 

Where  Youth  resorts,  but  come  to  me: 
For  mine's  a  garden  of  faded  flowers, 

More  fit  for  sorrow,  for  age  and  thee. 
And  there  we  shall  have  our  feasts  of  tears, 

And  many  a  cup  in  silence  pour: 
Our  guests,  the  shades  of  former  years, 

Our  toasts,  to  lips  that  bloom  no  more. 

There,   while   the  myrtle's   withering  boughs 
Their  lifeless  leaves  around  us  shed, 


76  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

We'll  brim  the  bowl  to  broken  vows, 

To  friends  long  lost,  the  changed,  the  dead. 

Or  while  some  blighted  laurel  waves 
Its  branches  o'er  the  dreary  spot, 

We'll  drink  to  those  neglected  graves 
Where  valor  sleeps,  unnamed,  forgot. 

Joyous  as  was  that  spirit,  its  tenderness  and 
sensibility  were  yet  true  to  the  mother  that 
bore  him.  The  sadness  native  to  the  true 
Irish  temperament  is  like  the  haunting  pathos 
of  those  wonderful  melodies,  breathing  in  the 
most  frolic  moment  of  the  near-by  fountain 
of  tears.  So  perfect  is  the  marriage  of 
Moore's  verse  to  the  music  of  his  country 
that  the  sub-note  of  sorrow  in  the  one  is  in- 
stantly struck  in  the  other,  as  if  they  were  both 
of  a  birth,  twinned  in  the  same  soul  and  in- 
spiration. 

Such  devotion  coupled  with  such  genius 
could  not  fail  to  achieve  the  most  precious  re- 
sults. In  the  present  estate  of  political  sen- 
timent with  regard  to  Ireland,  in  the  apathy 
with  which  her  fortunes  are  regarded  by  too 


THOMAS  MOORE  77 

many  of  her  kin  in  this  country,  in  the  appar- 
ent decay  of  the  national  hope  "at  home" — a 
phrase  no  longer  intelligible — one  cannot  read 
over  these  poems,  full  of  fresh  and  passionate 
aspiration,  without  a  feeling  of  wonder  at  the 
intensity  of  that  patriotism  which  alas!  seems 
destined  to  pass  into  a  tradition.*  Yet,  in  one 
of  his  highest  moments  of  power  and  proph- 
ecy, our  poet  forbids  such  a  thought: 

Like  the  bright  lamp  that  shone  in  Kildare's  holy  fane, 
And  burn'd  thro'  long  ages  of  darkness  and  storm, 

Is  the  heart  that  sorrows  have  frown'd  on  in  vain, 
Whose  spirit  outlives  them,  unfading  and  warm. 

Erin,  oh  Erin,  thus  bright  thro'  the  tears 

Of  a  long  night  of  bondage,  thy  spirit  appears. 

The  nations  have  fallen,  and  thou  still  art  young, 
Thy  sun  is  but  rising  when  others  are  set ; 

And  tho'  slavery's  cloud  o'er  thy  morning  hath  hung, 
The  full  noon  of  freedom  shall  beam  round  thee  yet! 

♦This  was  written   some  years  ago: — the  present  moment  is 
more  hopeful. 


78  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

V 

LALLA  ROOKH 

I  NOW  pass  to  a  consideration  of  the  most 
elaborate  poetical  work  which  Moore 
has  given  us — the  wide-famed  and  variously 
judged  and  misjudged  "Lalla  Rookh."  One 
of  the  wisest  men  of  this  country,  whose  lit- 
erary judgments  are  declared  to  be  without 
appeal,  has  written:  "The  test  or  measure 
of  poetic  genius  is  the  power  to  read  the 
poetry  of  affairs — to  fuse  the  circumstances 
of  to-day.  I  know  there  is  entertainment  and 
room  for  talent  in  the  artist's  selection  of  an- 
cient or  remote  subjects;  as  when  the  poet 
goes  to  India,  or  to  Rome,  or  Persia,  for  his 
fable.  But  I  believe  nobody  knows  better 
than  he  that  herein  he  consults  his  ease  rather 
than  his  strength  or  his  desire." 

This  truth  is  better  apprehended  to-day  than 
it  was  in  the  epoch  which  gave  to  a  ravished 
world  such  productions  as  "The  Giaour"  and 


THOMAS  MOORE  79 

"Lalla  Rookh";  and  it  is  this  which,  if  I 
may  be  allowed  the  phrase,  discounts  the 
value  of  the  most  strenuous  work  of  Moore's 
creative  faculty.  Perhaps  Taine  touches 
the  point  more  acutely  where  he  inti- 
mates that  Moore  was  not  pantheistical 
enough  to  wear  the  singing  robes  of  Firdousi. 
It  is  a  strange  fact  in  literature  that  the  things 
which  one  writer  neglects  as  unfit  material, 
may  be  employed  by  another  to  that  vital  pur- 
pose which  is  the  enduring  life  of  art  in  any 
of  its  forms.  In  the  beautiful  English  coun- 
try, where  the  Irish  poet  had  fixed  his  home, 
lay  most  of  those  sources  of  thought  and  in- 
spiration from  which  Tennyson  was  to  draw 
the  sustaining  food  of  a  more  exquisitely  true 
and  natural  poetry  than  had  yet  been  written. 
But  the  talking  oak  had  no  message  for  the 
ears  of  the  Minstrel  of  Tara;  the  brook  bab- 
bled for  him  no  secrets  worthy  to  flow  on  for- 
ever in  the  thoughts  of  men.  Philip's  farm 
was  like  any  one  of  a  dozen  about  Sloperton; 
but  our  poet  looked  on   it  with  alien  eyes. 


80  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

Moore  had  no  mind  to  ponder  the  poetic  pos- 
sibilities of  a  dusty  English  miller,  nor  would 
he  give  a  sigh  to  the  miller's  daughter  who 

— "is  grown  so  dear,  so  dear, 
That  I  would  be  the  jewel  that  trembles  at  her  ear." 

Indeed  he  had  married  his  Irish  Bessie  be- 
fore ever  he  knew  Wilts  or  Derbyshire.  Yet 
it  seems  certain  that  Lady  Clara  Vere  de  Vere 
was  on  his  visiting  list — how  could  he  escape 
her  and  she  the  daughter  of  a  hundred 
earls!  .  .  . 

All  this  is  not  to  disparage  "Lalla  Rookh," 
of  which  indeed  I  am  too  fond  to  attempt  a 
critical  estimate.  Considered  merely  as 
verse-building,  imagery — without  reference 
to  true  and  deep  spiritualities — most  modern 
English  metre  shows  poor  and  crude  beside 
the  gorgeous  Arabesque  of  the  Irish  poet's 
fancy.  Moore  has  out-Persianed  the  Persian : 
compared  to  him,  Hafiz  is  a  child  lisping  in 
numbers;  Firdousi  shames  the  Orient  that  has 
literally  adopted  the  foreign  changeling  in  his 
stead;  the  Irish  thrush  has  deceived  the  world 


THOMAS  MOORE  81 

with  its  mock  notes  borrowed  from  the  bulbul 
of  the  enchanted  gardens. 

It  was  a  wonderful  feat,  but  looking  back 
over  the  completed  literary  cycle,  we  see  that 
Moore  might  have  turned  his  powers  to  bet- 
ter account.  "Lalla  Rookh"  is  a  charming 
romance  whose  gossamer  web,  shot  with  the 
splendours  of  the  Orient,  a  child  may  blow 
away  with  its  breath.  Its  passion  seldom  con- 
vinces, and,  in  spite  of  the  amazing  industry 
of  the  poet,  too  much  in  evidence,  its  fidelity 
to  sentiment  and  scene  is  always  in  question. 
Six  months  in  the  East  would  have  served 
Moore  better  than  all  his  books  of  reference. 
But  in  that  event  it  is  possible  that  "Lalla 
Rookh"  would  never  have  been  written, — a 
contingency  which  you  and  I  would  not  care 
to  contemplate.  Tricked  out  as  it  is  with  all 
the  graces  and  seductions  of  a  bayadere,  it  may 
not  bear  comparison  with  the  severe  master- 
pieces of  English  verse. 

Vastly  more  ingenuity  and  resource  and 
poetical  talent  were  expended  upon   "Lalla 


82  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

Rookh"  than  are  shown  in  Fitzgerald's  para- 
phrase of  Omar,  yet  the  poem  of  the  Rubaiyat 
is  in  some  quarters  critically  esteemed  to  bear 
the  palm  by  virtue  of  its  more  convincing 
orientalism. 

Beautiful  then,  as  "Lalla  Rookh"  is,  with 
measures  that  seem  naturally  adapted  to  mu- 
sic— the  four  long  poems  of  which  it  is  made 
up,  have  been  called  four  extended  Irish  Mel- 
odies, which  is  not  quite  just  to  the  Melodies 
— it  does  not  offer  such  food  to  the  spirit  as 
"In  Memoriam";  it  does  not  stimulate  the 
thought  like  the  best  cantos  of  "Childe  Har- 
old," or  the  nobler  effort  of  Wordsworth. 

Obviously  this  is  a  mixing  of  opposites,  but 
the  greatest  poem  must  be  that  which  claims 
the  suffrage  of  the  highest  human  interest; 
and  it  is  in  the  latter  works  cited  we  shall 
find  the  ranking  quality  denied  to  "Lalla 
Rookh."  Yet  the  world  is  not  always  willing 
to  accept  so  stern  a  poetical  canon.  If,  as 
was  believed  of  old,  the  birth  of  a  poet  be  a 
joy  to  the  world,  might  not  the  world  soon 


THOMAS  MOORE  83 

turn  the  joy  into  a  curse  by  imposing  such 
conditions  as  would  fetter  the  wings  of  the 
poetic  soul  and  cast  a  baulking  spell  across 
the  rare  moments  of  fullest  inspiration? 
Moore  himself  has  delightfully  anticipated 
such  criticism  by  putting  it  into  the  mouth  of 
his  Fadladeen — and  I  may  say  that  I  think 
better  of  Fadladeen  than  of  some  others,  his 
poetical  personae. 

It  is  not  easy  to  offer  extracts  from  "Lalla 
Rookh,"  for  the  reason  that  too  much  of  it 
tempts  quotation.  I  may  ask  your  indulgence 
while  I  mark  a  few  passages  where  the  thrush 
and  the  bulbul  sing  one  note,  and  that  the 
note  of  beauty  and  rapture  which  men  have 
agreed  to  call  poetry. 

The  chief  reproach  which  the  critics  bring 
against  our  poet  is,  humorously  enough,  that 
he  has  a  seemingly  inexhaustible  store  of  that 
poetical  capital  of  which  less  gifted  rhyme- 
sters are  deuced  glad  to  have  a  very  small 
portion, — namely,  fancy,  felicity  of  illustration 
and  that  happiness  of  spirit,  that  divine  con- 


84  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

fidence,  by  which  the  poet  is  enabled  to  rise 
unto  the  pure  ether.  "Paradise  and  the 
Peri"  exemplifies  this  fortunate  estate  of  the 
poet  as  I  believe  does  no  other  poem  in  the 
English  tongue.  It  is  so  familiar  to  us  all 
that  I  may  not  quote, — yet  I  beg  for  this  one 
glorious  piece  of  descriptive  verse  in  which 
are  assembled  such  images  of  beauty  as  give 
a  dazzling  richness  to  the  lines,  and  which,  it 
is  pleasing  to  remember  (in  spite  of  Taine  and 
Emerson)  have  been  hailed  as  native  to  the 
East: — 

Now  upon  Syria's  land  of  roses 
Softly  the  light  of  Eve  reposes, 
And,  like  a  glory,  the  broad  sun 
Hangs  over  sainted  Lebanon ; 
Whose  head  in  wintry  grandeur  tow'rs 

And  whitens  with  eternal  sleet, 
While  summer  in  a  vale  of  flow'rs, 

Is  sleeping  rosy  at  his  feet. 

To  one  who  looked  from  upper  air 
O'er  all  the  enchanted  region  there, 
How  beauteous  mi'.st  have  been  the  glow, 
The  life,  the  sparkling  from  below ! 


THOMAS  MOORE  85 

Fair  gardens,  shining  streams,  with  ranks 
Of  golden  melons  on  their  banks, 
More  golden  where  the  sunlight  falls; — 
Gay  lizards,  glittering  on  the  walls 
Of  ruined  shrines,  busy  and  bright, 
As  they  were  all  alive  with  light; 
And  yet,  more  splendid,  numerous  flocks 
Of  pigeons  settling  on  the  rocks, 
With  their  rich  restless  wings,  that  gleam 
Variously  in  the  crimson  beam 
Of  the  warm  West, — as  if  inlaid 
With  brilliants  from  the  mine,  or  made 
Of  tearless  rainbows,  such  as  span 
The  unclouded  skies  of  Peristan. 
And  then  the  mingling  sounds  that  come 
Of  shepherd's  ancient  reed,  with  hum 
Of  the  wild  bees  of  Palestine, 
Banqueting  through  the  flow'ry  vales ; 
And,  Jordan,  those  sweet  banks  of  thine, 
And  woods  so  full  of  nightingales. 

The  poem  of  "The  Fire  Worshippers,"  in 
which  Moore  receives  an  access  of  earnestness 
from  identifying  the  cause  of  Mithra  with  the 
unconquered  national  spirit  of  Ireland — Iran 


86  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

is  easily  read  Erin — is  critically  esteemed  the 
best  in  "Lalla  Rookh."  It  was  honoured  with 
the  preference  of  Lord  Byron,  who  himself 
liked  a  good  story  in  verse  better  than  he  could 
or  would  tell  it.  Certainly  the  poet  is  here 
in  thorough  touch  with  his  theme,  and  if  there 
be  objection  to  Hafed  as  a  scarcely  disguised 
Fenian,  we  are  not  disposed  to  quarrel  with 
the  inconsistency,  since  on  this  very  account 
Moore  writes  with  intense  feeling,  which  is 
usually  the  mother  of  good  poetry.  The 
whole  story  is  finely  imagined,  and  the  catas- 
trophe worked  out  with  a  high  degree  of 
dramatic  strength  and  skill. 

I  shall  cite  only  a  few  lines  from  this,  the 
finest  work  of  Moore's  creative  power. 
Hinda  is  thus  described,  yet  beautifully  as  it 
is  done,  I  fancy  Byron  knew  his  fair  pagan 
better  when  he  gave  us  Haidee: 

Light  as  the  angel  shapes  that  bless 
An  infant's  dream,  yet  not  the  less 
Rich  in  all  woman's  loveliness; — 
With  eyes  so  pure,  that  from  their  ray 


THOMAS  MOORE  87 

Dark  Vice  would  turn  abash'd  away, 
Blinded  like  serpents  when  they  gaze 
Upon  the  em'rald's  virgin  blaze ; — 
Yet  fill'd  with  all  youth's  sweet  desires, 
Mingling  the  meek  and  vestal  fires 
Of  other  worlds  with  all  the  bliss, 
The  fond,  weak  tenderness  of  this. 

Poetry  more  chaste  is  not  frequent  in  the 
anthologies,  but  it  leaves  Hinda  a  lovely  ab- 
straction.    We  think  of  Haidee's 

Short  upper  lip — sweet  lips  that  make  us  sigh 
E'er  to  have  seen  such ; 

and  of  that  ominous  fact  in  her  brief  story  of 
love  and  passion — 

Her  mother  was  a  Moorish  maid  from  Fez 
Where  all  is  Allah — or  a  wilderness! 

In  'The  Light  of  the  Harem"  our  Poet  il- 
lustrates the  musical  possibilities  of  the  Eng- 
lish language  more  happily  perhaps  than  he 
has  done  in  any  other  poem — save,  of  course, 
the  Irish  lyrics.     It  is  pure  joy,  sheer  wanton- 


88  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

ness  of  delightful  fancy.  Every  line  sings 
itself.  Compare  it  with  some  of  the  standard 
things  that  are  dubbed  poetry  by  the  school- 
men, and  the  brain  aches  out  of  sympathy. 
But  "Lalla  Rookh"  has  already  detained  me 
too  long,  and  I  must  content  myself  with  these 
few  exquisite  lines  in  which  the  poet  naively, 
yet  truly,  describes  the  charm  of  his  own 
verse: 

For  mine  is  the  lay  that  lightly  floats, 
And  mine  are  the  murmuring,  dying  notes 
That  fall  as  soft  as  snow  on  the  sea, 
And  melt  in  the  wave  as  instantly; — 
And  the  passionate  strain  that,  deeply  going, 

Refines  the  bosom  it  trembles  through, 
As  the  musk-wind,  over  the  water  blowing, 

Ruffles  the  wave,  but  sweetens  it  too. 

I  wonder  if  the  lightness  of  this  frolic  fancy, 
wantoning  in  images  of  roses  and  wine,  this 
poet  of  Love's  summer  heaven,  will  ever  cease 
to  be  admirable  among  men.  And  yet  the 
Dryasdusts  who  presume  to  sit  in  judgment 
on  these   delicate  creations  which,   for  any- 


THOMAS  MOORE  89 

thing  like  an  adequate  likeness  of  similar  ex- 
cellence, beggar  the  whole  antecedent  tribe  of 
rhymers,  will  dismiss  them  for  you  with  a 
wave  of  the  hand  as  "light"  poetry.  Light  in- 
deed! As  if  dulness  and  heaviness  were  not 
the  curse  of  the  human  intellect,  and  it  were 
a  reproach  that  our  Irish  Ariel  alone  es- 
capes it! 

I  may  not  dismiss  the  subject  of  "Lalla 
Rookh"  without  a  word  on  "The  Loves  of  the 
Angels,"  which  nearly  followed  the  more  fa- 
mous Orientalism  in  point  of  time,  and  is  not 
greatly  inferior  to  it  in  the  essentials  of  poet- 
ical performance.  But,  although  the  poem 
cannot  be  pronounced  a  failure,  it  is  evident 
that  Moore  had  taken  his  pitcher  once  too 
often  to  the  well  of  Eastern  legend.  Besides, 
the  conditions  of  composition  were  different. 
"Lalla  Rookh"  was  created,  as  the  poet  tells 
us,  amid  the  snows  of  two  or  three  Derbyshire 
winters.  The  "Loves"  was  written  during  a 
pleasant  exile,  amid  overmuch  distraction,  at 
Paris.     The  result  proves  that  even  a  poet  who 


90  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

seems  to  have  been  made  for  society,  had  some- 
times to  take  off  his  door-knocker  and  be  at 
home  to  none  but  the  Muses. 


VI 

HIS  PROSE 

OF  Moore's  works  in  prose  I  have  not 
room  to  speak  at  length,  but  some  of 
them  are  of  deservedly  high  reputation  and 
will  live  as  long  as  his  poetry.  One  is  moved 
to  wonder  how  he  was  able  to  do  such  a  mass 
of  work  and  to  do  it  so  well — he  was  always 
singularly  thorough  and  painstaking — and 
still  give  so  much  of  himself  to  the  pleasing 
exactions  of  fashionable  society.  Well  might 
he  sing: — 

They  may  rail  at  this  life — from  the  hour  I  began  it, 
I've  found  it  a  world  full  of  kindness  and  bliss; 

And  until  they  can  show  me  some  happier  planet, 
More  social  and  bright,  I'll  content  me  with  this. 

But   his   biographer,    Lord   John   Russell, 


THOMAS  MOORE  91 

bids  us  take  note  that  the  poet  did  not  allow 
his  social  tastes  to  interfere  with  the  business 
of  authorship.  There  were  for  him  in  every 
year  long  periods  of  rest,  thought  and  study 
at  his  Sloperton  retreat,  and  from  these  re- 
tirements came  the  fruit  of  his  more  earnest 
labour. 

Among  the  prose  works  of  Moore  the  Life 
of  Byron  seems  to  me  the  most  important. 
So  eminent  a  critic  as  Macaulay  ranks  it  with 
the  finest  prose  compositions  which  any  age 
has  produced.  The  singular  good  taste  with 
which  Moore  executed  this  task,  touching 
himself  at  so  many  points;  the  courage  and 
manliness  which  he  evinced  in  the  trying  rela- 
tions produced  by  the  noble  poet's  trust,  and 
the  final  judgment  which  the  world,  at  first 
inclined  to  impugn  his  motives,  has  pro- 
nounced on  the  whole  affair — render  it  the 
proudest  as  it  is  the  most  remarkable  episode 
in  Moore's  literary  career. 

"The  Epicurean"  done  in  poetic  prose,  has 
been  called  the  "highest  and  best  sustained 


92  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

flight  in  the  regions  of  pure  romance."  I 
think  it  smells  a  little  too  much  of  the  lamp, 
but  it  is  surely  a  most  finished  piece  of  work, 
with  passages  of  great  beauty  and  eloquence. 
Perhaps  I  ought  to  be  ashamed  to  confess  that 
I  find  a  more  genuine  pleasure  in  reading  that 
delightful  fragment  which  even  the  sly  his- 
torian of  the  abbeys  of  Touraine  might  have 
envied — "The  Chapter  of  the  Blanket."  The 
Lives  of  Sheridan  and  Lord  Edward  Fitz- 
gerald are  not  proposed  as  perfect  models  of 
biography,  neither  are  they  of  merely  medi- 
ocre value.  The  "Sheridan"  is  enriched  with 
some  of  Moore's  most  brilliant  prose  and  the 
Life  of  Lord  Edward  does  justice  to  a  beau- 
tiful and  heroic  character.  I  have  never  been 
able  to  read  Moore's  History  of  Ireland,  and 
I  suspect  the  poet  had  not  much  natural  fit- 
ness for  the  task.  But  his  glory  appears  to  me 
the  more  genuine  that  we  are  able  to  score  an 
occasional  failure  against  him. 

As  a  reviewer  Moore  set  a  far  higher  mark 
than    as    a    historian.     Mr.    Richard    Henry 


THOMAS  MOORE  93 

Stoddard  declares  himself  amazed  at  the 
cleverness  of  Moore's  critical  papers  and  the 
immense  versatility  of  their  author.  "His 
contributions  to  The  Edinburgh  Review,"  says 
the  American  scholar,  "were  astonishingly 
good  of  their  kind;  critically  acute,  thor- 
oughly learned  and  politically  sagacious." 
Mr.  Richard  Heme  Shepherd,  the  competent 
English  critic,  allots  our  poet  an  honourable 
place  in  the  brilliant  constellation  of  contrib- 
utors which  the  famous  Review  numbered  in 
those  years — Sydney  Smith,  Brougham,  Ma- 
caulay,  Carlyle,  Hallam,  and  Jeffrey  himself. 
These  are  splendid  testimonies  to  the  intel- 
lectual calibre  of  a  man  who  is  often  ignor- 
antly  put  down  as  a  mere  trifler  in  poetry — a 
writer  of  vers  de  societe. 

The  visit  which  our  poet  made  to  America 
in  1803,  when  he  was  a  young  man  of  twenty- 
four,  gave  birth  to  some  very  keen  poetical 
satire  touching  social  and  political  conditions 
in  this  country,  for  which  the  biographers  of 
Moore  are  in  the  habit  of  offering  apology. 


94  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

It  does  not  seem  to  me  that  the  incident  is  of 
much  moment.  Moore  was  honestly  shocked 
at  some  things  which  he  saw  in  the  infant  Re- 
public, and  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that 
he  honestly  reported  his  impressions.  He 
was  little  more  than  a  boy  in  years,  and  he 
lived  to  see  the  Republic  grow  great  in  spite 
of  the  evils  which  attended  its  early  founda- 
tion. Be  it  remembered  that  a  generation 
afterward  there  were  American  poets  whom 
the  brutalities  of  slavery  roused  to  as  fierce  a 
pitch  of  moral  indignation — if  not  to  as  tell- 
ing literary  purpose — as  the  author  of  these 
spirited  lines: 

Oh!  Freedom!  Freedom!  how  I  hate  thy  cant! 
Not  Eastern  bombast,  not  the  savage  rant 
Of  purpled  madmen,  were  they  numbered  all 
From  Roman  Nero  down  to  Russian  Paul, 
Could  grate  upon  my  ear,  so  mean,  so  base, 
As  the  rank  jargon  of  that  factious  race, 
Who,  poor  of  heart  and  prodigal  of  words, 
Formed  to  be  slaves,  yet  struggling  to  be  lords, 
Strut  forth  as  patriots,  from  their  negro  marts, 
And  shout  for  rights,  with  rapine  in  their  hearts! 


THOMAS  MOORE  95 

Speaking  as  a  humble  student  of  literature, 
I  am  rather  glad  than  otherwise  that  Moore's 
feelings  were  excited  to  such  excellent  poet- 
ical effect.  Bad  politics  is  always  a  thing 
easier  mended  than  bad  poetry.  If  our  poet 
had  not  been  disillusioned  of  some  of  his 
dreams — as  Charles  Dickens  professed  to  be 
some  thirty  odd  years  later — he  would  have 
kept  his  temper  and  would  probably  not  have 
risen,  poetically,  above  the  elegant  trifling  of 
most  of  these  American  pieces. 

Before  leaving  the  American  episode  it  is 
proper  to  set  down  here  the  memorable  words 
which  the  poet  wrote  many  years  afterward, 
recalling  the  storm  of  censure  that  his  criti- 
cisms had  provoked:  "The  good  will  I  have 
experienced  from  more  than  one  distinguished 
American  sufficiently  assures  me  that  any  in- 
justice I  may  have  done  to  that  land  of  free- 
men, if  not  long  since  wholly  forgotten,  is 
remembered  only  to  be  forgiven." 


96  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

VII 

CRITICAL  DEPRECIATION 

SINCE  the  foregoing  pages  were  written, 
I  have  turned  over  the  "Treasury  of 
Irish  Poetry,"  edited  by  Stopford  A.  Brooke 
and  T.  W.  Rolleston,  and  it  is  but  fair  to  say, 
a  compilation  admirable  in  most  respects.  I 
should,  however,  like  to  mark  some  exception 
to  Mr.  Brooke's  disparaging  estimate  of 
Moore. 

To  speak  with  due  candour,  the  worst  thing 
in  this  book  of  Irish  poetry  is  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Brooke's  prose  Had  that  been  omitted,  or, 
at  least,  the  section  dealing  critically  with 
Moore,  the  present  anthology  would  offer 
no  serious  blemish.  Mr.  Brooke  is  a  dis- 
tinctly minor  poet  himself,  as  this  collec- 
tion bears  evidence,  but  as  a  critic  and  com- 
mentator, he  is  not  without  honour;  and  in  a 
long  life  of  literary  plodding  it  is  only  fair 
to  say  that  he  has  done  some  respectable  work. 


THOMAS  MOORE  97 

It  is  true  also  that  he  is  not  without  feeling  for 
Irish  poetry;  many  of  his  observations  in  the 
preface  to  this  volume  are  in  a  high  degree 
illuminating.  But  in  his  treatment  of  the 
largest  figure  in  Irish  poetical  literature  (who 
is  also  a  true  world-poet),  he  reveals  all  the 
one-sidedness  of  a  small-beer  critic.  In  his 
attempted  belittling  of  Moore  he  offers  noth- 
ing new,  and  there  is  a  note  of  personal 
acerbity  in  his  writing  which  is  difficult  to  un- 
derstand, except  on  the  trite  theory  that  the 
mere  critic  who  cannot  create  literature  usu- 
ally hates  the  man  who  can.  Allowance 
should  also  be  made  for  the  fact  that  Mr. 
Brooke  is  an  Irishman — an  observation  not  in 
the  least  enigmatical,  in  view  of  certain  pain- 
ful truths  already  touched  upon. 

"No  one  dreams,"  says  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Brooke, — "of  comparing  Moore  with  the 
greater  men,  or  of  giving  his  poetry  too  im- 
portant a  place  in  the  history  of  English  song; 
but  the  man  whose  work  Byron  frankly  ad- 
mired,  whom   Scott  did   not  dispraise,   who 


98  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

received  letters  of  thanks  and  appreciation 
from  readers  in  America,  Europe  and  Asia; 
who  fulfilled  Matthew  Arnold's  somewhat 
foolish  criterion  of  greatness  by  being  known 
and  accepted  on  the  Continent;  whom  the 
Italians,  French,  Germans,  Russians,  Swedes 
and  Dutch  translated;  whose  'Lalla  Rookh' 
was  partly  put  into  Persian  and  became  the 
companion  of  Persians  in  their  travels  and  in 
the  streets  of  Ispahan;  to  whom  publishers 
like  Longmans  gave  three  thousand  pounds 
for  a  poem  before  they  had  even  seen  it — as  a 
tribute  to  reputation  already  acquired — can- 
not surely  be  treated  with  the  indifferent  con- 
tempt which  some  have  lavished  upon 
him." 

I  have  italicised  the  last  quoted  words  in 
order  the  more  strongly  to  mark  the  dishon- 
esty of  Mr.  Brooke's  critical  method.  Here 
he  would  have  you  believe  he  is  making  a 
great  show  of  liberality  before  he  proceeds  to 
his  own  inept  and  unwarranted  disparage- 
ment of  Moore. 


THOMAS  MOORE  99 

Mr.  Brooke  is  at  least  a  practised  literary 
hand,  with  a  good  share  of  the  knowledge  that 
goes  with  the  craft.  One  is  therefore  sur- 
prised to  find  him  guilty  of  such  a  stroke  of 
bungling  malice  as  the  statement  that  Scott 
did  not  dispraise  Moore!  Is  not  Sir  Walter's 
Journal  open  to  us  as  to  the  Rev.  Brooke? 
Do  we  not  read  therein  the  noble  Scot's  trib- 
ute to  the  Irish  lyrist — to  that  union  of 
genius,  versatility  and  learning,  the  most  bril- 
liant with  the  most  solid  parts,  which  aston- 
ished Byron — and  on  many  a  page  the  record 
of  his  sincere  friendship  and  profound  ad- 
miration? 

But  pray,  Mr.  Brooke,  what  critic  of  de- 
cent reputation  ever  ventured  to  treat  Moore 
with  indifferent  contempt?  Did  Jeffrey  or 
Gifford,  did  Hazlitt  or  Macaulay?  Was  he 
not  loved  and  admired  by  Sydney  Smith  and 
Dr.  Parr — by  even  the  captious  Leigh  Hunt 
and  the  learned  Mackintosh?  How  were 
those  acute  and  powerful  minds  deceived 
since  it  falls  to   Stopford   Brooke   to   assign 


ioo  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

Moore  his  true  status  in  literature? 

Mr.  Brooke  emits  the  invidious  opinion 
that  Moore's  "poetry  is  the  translation  of  mu- 
sic into  as  pretty  and  melodious  words  as 
possible."  "Music  was  first,  and  poetry  fol- 
lowed," observes  Mr.  Brooke;  and  he  adds, 
with  seeming  profundity,  "This  is  not  the  case 
with  a  great  poet." 

The  truth  is,  Moore's  unexampled  blend  of 
musical  and  poetical  genius  has  confounded 
the  critics.  Pragmatical  persons  like  the 
Rev.  Brooke  resent  the  intrusion  into  Moore's 
work  of  a  quality  with  which  they  know  not 
how  to  deal,  and  yet  which,  in  some  indefin- 
able way,  imparts  a  most  rare  and  distinctive 
excellence  to  his  poetry.  It  never  seems  to 
occur  to  such  myopic  critics  that  Moore's  gift 
of  music  supplies  a  clue  to  his  singular  supe- 
riority as  a  lyrical  poet.  Yet  the  poet  himself 
puts  the  clue  into  their  hands,  for  he  tells  us, 
as  I  have  already  quoted:  "I  only  know  that 
in  a  strong  and  inborn  feeling  for  music  lies 
the  source  of  whatever  talent  I   may  have 


THOMAS  MOORE  101 

shown  for  poetical  composition,  and  that  it 
was  the  effort  to  translate  into  language  the 
emotions  and  passions  which  music  appeared 
to  me  to  express,  that  first  led  to  my  writing 
any  poetry  at  all  deserving  of  the  name." 

Of  course,  we  should  have  expected  the 
shallow  Brooke  to  tell  us  that  Moore  had 
fancy,  but  no  imagination.  This  is  one  of  the 
stock  criticisms  formulated  against  him  by 
writers  who  are  incapable  of  appreciating  the 
poet's  genius.  Like  Heine,  the  Irish  poet  had 
too  much  fancy, — so  they  allege!  "I  have 
myself  experienced  what  such  critics  say,"  re- 
marks Heine;  "the  fowl  stands  upon  one  leg 
and  clucks  that  the  singer  has  no  soul;  the 
turkey-cock  gobbles  that  he  has  no  earnest- 
ness; the  dove  coos  that  he  does  not  know  true 
love;  the  goose  cackles  that  he  is  not  suffi- 
ciently wise;  the  capon  chirps  that  he  is  not 
moral;  the  wren  twitters  that  he,  alas!  has  no 
religion;  the  sparrow  pipes  that  he  is  not  pro- 
lific enough;  lapwings,  magpies,  owls,  all 
these  croak,  chirp  and  chatter." 


102  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

The  Brooke  babbles  that  Moore  has  no 
depth! 

But  at  least  he  had  fancy — that  is  conceded 
as  a  species  of  reproach  to  our  unrivalled 
Irish  Ariel.  Now  this  very  quality  is  almost 
wholly  lacking  in  English  verse,  and  Moore 
is  hated  and  disparaged  for  possessing  so 
much  of  it.  By  this  gift  of  fancy,  as  Lord 
Byron  finely  said,  he  proved  his  Oriental  de- 
scent better  than  the  most  zealous  of  his  coun- 
try's antiquarians.  Moore  is  the  most  French 
of  all  the  English  writers,  says  Taine — a  re- 
mark easily  interpreted.  And  it  is  for  this 
reason  Moore  "stands  curiously  alone," — to 
quote  Mr.  Brooke's  invidious  phrase, — not 
because  he  failed  of  imaginative  power,  but 
rather  because  in  his  peculiar  province  he  has 
not  a  serious  rival. 

We  do  not  now  regard  the  Miltonic  dumps 
as  a  great  proof  of  imagination — at  least 
Taine  did  not — and  we  are  very  sure  that  dul- 
ness  and  heaviness  are  the  clogging  curse  of 
the  human  intellect,  never  more  thoroughly 


THOMAS  MOORE  103 

naturalised  than  in  the  English  literary  at- 
mosphere. Upon  the  ground  that  Moore  is 
never  dull  or  heavy  (and  therefore  never 
English)  critics  like  the  Rev.  Brooke  have 
indicted  him  for  lack  of  imagination. 

It  will  not  be  disputed  that  Edgar  Allan 
Poe  was  a  better  poet  than  the  Rev.  Stopford 
Brooke,  and  at  least  as  good  a  critic.  I  beg 
to  quote  here  what  he  says  concerning  this 
hackneyed  stricture  upon  Moore: 

"It  has  been  the  fashion  of  late  days  to  deny 
Moore  imagination,  while  granting  him  fancy 
— a  distinction  originating  with  Coleridge, 
than  whom  no  man  more  fully  comprehended 
the  great  powers  of  Moore.  The  fact  is  that 
the  fancy  of  this  poet  so  far  predominated 
over  all  his  other  faculties,  and  over  the  fancy 
of  all  other  men,  as  to  have  induced  very  nat- 
urally the  idea  that  he  is  fanciful  only. 

"But  never  was  there  a  greater  mistake; 
never  was  a  grosser  wrong  done  the  fame  of 
a  true  poet.  In  the  compass  of  the  English 
language  I  can  call  to  mind  no  poem  more 


io4  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

profound  or  more  weirdly  imaginative,  in  the 
best  sense,  than  the  lines  commencing,  'I 
would  I  were  by  that  dim  lake,'  which  are 
the  composition  of  Thomas  Moore." 

Mr.  Brooke  thinks  that  he  scores  pro- 
foundly against  Moore  when  he  intimates  that 
the  latter  neglected,  as  a  source  of  poetical  in- 
spiration, the  fairies  and  leprechauns  so  much 
in  favour  with  the  neo-Celtic  school  of  latter- 
day  poets.  Be  it  understood  that  I  greatly 
admire  the  work  of  these  poets,  and  especially 
the  delicate,  mystical  genius  of  Yeats,  the  most 
authentic  voice  among  them  all.  But  I  ven- 
ture to  submit,  the  neo-Celts  have  not  yet 
given  us  better  poetry  than  Moore's;  and, 
charming  as  their  poetry  often  is,  I  do  not 
suppose  it  will  ever  drive  the  Melodies  out 
of  favour. 


THOMAS  MOORE  105 

VIII 

A  FAMOUS  DUEL 

THAT  the  Muse  of  Literary  History 
likes  her  joke  was  pretty  well  estab- 
lished even  before  she  dismissed  Moore  and 
Jeffrey  from  their  grey  goose  quills  to  do  bat- 
tle on  the  field  of  honour.  Shall  we  cry  alas! 
with  Burke,  over  the  decline  of  chivalry? 
For  it  is  too  certain  that  the  spirit  which  once 
presided  over  these  affairs  is  gone  out, — "with 
sighing  sent," — and  the  uncanny  elf  that  we 
are  calling,  in  this  evil  latter  time,  the  Spirit 
of  Commercialism,  is  come  in.  Poets  do  not 
now  challenge  their  critics  to  mortal  combat. 
Nay,  your  poet  knows  a  trick  worth  two  of 
that,  being  to-day  primarily  a  man  of  business, 
shrewdly  aware  that  the  "chorus  of  indolent 
reviewers"  can  do  him  no  greater  damage 
than  to  advertise  his  works.  For  the  com- 
mercialist  is  keeping  literary  shop.  Criti- 
cism is  become  a  parrot  cry.     Parnassus  is 


106  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

covered  with  bizarre  inscriptions,  like  an 
American  landscape.  Even  the  sad  consola- 
tion of  ifcneas  is  denied  to  us  who  would  fain 
hope  for  better  things — 

O  passi  graviora  dabit  deus  his  quoque  fineml 

Tom  Moore,  although  a  very  small  man 
physically — Theodore  Hook  savagely  de- 
scribed him  as  a  cross  between  a  toad  and  a 
cupid — was  a  firm  believer  in  the  code  duello. 
More  than  thirty  years  after  his  bloodless  en- 
counter with  Jeffrey,  the  American  Willis 
reports  for  us  a  conversation  at  Lady  Blessing- 
ton's  in  London,  in  which  the  poet  reaffirmed 
the  fire-eating  principles  of  his  youth. 

In  spite  of  Moore's  pacific  character,  there 
is  no  doubt  that  he  was  always  ready,  upon 
due  occasion,  to  call  out  and  even  pink  an  ad- 
versary on  the  field  of  honour.  We  may  be 
glad  that  his  courage  was  only  once  put  to  so 
mortal  a  proof.  It  is  not  easy  to  overcome  the 
comic  suggestion  of  "Anacreon  Moore"  with 
a  pistol,  ready  to  go  off,  like  a  premature  ode, 


THOMAS  MOORE  107 

before  its  appointed  time,  and  tolerably  cer- 
tain— such  is  the  genius  of  accident — to 
wound  something  more  palpable  than  the 
"casing  air." 

Our  poet  had  so  keen  a  perception  of  the 
ludicrous  that  I  half  suspect  him  of  laughing 
slyly  with  us  over  that  which  is  portentously 
set  down  in  his  diary  as  "Particulars  of  My 
Hostile  Meeting  with  Jeffrey  in  the  year 
1806."  The  great  Jeffrey,  whose  once  fa- 
mous and  dreaded  criticisms  refuse  to  read 
like  literature  to-day,  had  gone  so  far  as  to 
accuse  the  poet  of  a  purpose  to  corrupt  the 
morals  of  youth,  in  some  of  his  earlier 
amatory  pieces,  written  over  the  pen-name  of 
Thomas  Little.  Even  my  Lord  Byron,  whose 
chaste  muse  was  yet  to  produce  "Beppo"  and 
"Don  Juan,"  mingled  his  censure  with  that  of 
the  Edinburgh  reviewer: 

Who,  in  soft  guise,  surrounded  by  a  choir 
Of  virgins  melting,  not  with  Vesta's  fire? 
'Tis  Little,  young  Catullus  of  his  day. 


108  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

Nothing  better  fixes  the  status  of  Jeffrey 
than  his  absurd  criticism  upon  the  amorous 
breathings  of  Moore.  Truth  is,  the  poetry 
upon  which  it  was  founded  is  marked  by  the 
utter  absence  of  anything  like  real  passion. 
Moore  was  merely  platonising,  and  the  im- 
practical, rather  than  unpoetical,  Jeffrey 
charged  him  with  a  devilish  lubricity.  The 
affair  should  have  ended  in  a  laugh,  instead 
of  a  duel.  It  ended  in  both,  and  there  are 
some  echoes  of  that  laughter  yet  lingering  in 
the  eternal  shades. 

However,  Moore  was  hot  for  a  deadly 
reprisal,  and,  by  the  hand  of  his  trusty, 
though  eccentric,  friend,  Hume,  he  dis- 
patched to  Jeffrey  a  fiery  cartel,  demanding 
a  plenary  apology,  or  that  condign  satisfac- 
tion which  one  gentleman  is  bound  to  accord 
another,  etc.  It  may  be  conceived  that  Jef- 
frey— a  slight,  bookish  man,  with  a  Scotch 
melancholy — had  no  taste  for  this  business; 
but  there  was  clearly  no  evading  it.  The 
Muses  were  bent  on  a  mortal  arbitrament,  and 


THOMAS  MOORE  109 

hastened  on  the  preliminaries.  "We  had 
agreed,"  says  Moore,  "that  it  would  not  be 
prudent  for  me  to  sleep  at  home  (for  fear  of 
the  constabulary,  no  doubt),  and  as  Hume  was 
not  the  man,  either  then  or  at  any  other  pe- 
riod of  his  life,  to  be  able  to  furnish  a  friend 
with  a  clean  pair  of  sheets,  I  took  the  sheets 
off  my  own  bed,  and,  holding  them  up  as  well 
as  I  could,  bore  them  away  with  us  in  the 
coach." 

Arrived  at  Chalk  Farm  bright  and  early, 
the  two  famous  principals  saw  each  other  for 
the  first  time.  Such  is  the  futility  of  paper 
warfare  that  Jeffrey  afterward  said  he  liked 
Moore  from  the  first  glimpse  he  had  of  him. 
"The  first  words  I  recollect  to  have  passed 
between  us,"  says  Moore — and  what  effort  of 
drollery  could  better  this  naive  description — 
"was  Jeffrey's  observing,  on  our  being  left 
alone  together,  'what  a  beautiful  morning  it 
is.'  'Yes,'  I  answered  with  a  slight  smile — 
(note  that  smile  on  the  roguish  Irish  mouth) 
— 'a  morning  made  for  better  purposes.'     To 


no  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

which  his  only  response  was  a  sort  of  assent- 
ing sigh." 

This  pleasing  and  decorous  sensibility  on 
the  part  of  Jeffrey,  as  of  one  prepared  to  put 
on  his  immortality,  was  certainly  not  echoed 
by  his  antagonist.  While  the  seconds  were 
loading  (or  unloading)  the  pistols,  Moore 
improved  at  once  the  opportunity  and  the 
amenities  of  the  code  by  telling  his  Scotch 
friend  a  story  of  one  Billy  Egan,  Irish  bar- 
rister, in  a  like  encounter.  If  Jeffrey 
laughed  at  it  we  are  not  told.  An  accurately 
timed  sortie  of  Bow-street  myrmidons  here 
ended  the  meeting;  and  "Little's  leadless  pis- 
tol" threatens  vainly  forever  in  the  pasquin- 
ade of  Byron. 

It  is,  perhaps,  not  so  well  known  that 
Moore,  deeming  Byron's  satirical  verses  a 
sufficient  casus  belli,  in  due  course  sent  the 
noble  lord  a  challenge.  Byron,  who  was  or- 
dinarily as  ready  for  a  row  as  for  a  woman, 
made  his  brother  poet  a  generous  amende, 
and — what   is   more   important   to   literature 


THOMAS  MOORE  in 

-sent    him    the    famous    song,    beginning — 

My  boat  is  on  the  shore, 

And  my  barque  is  on  the  sea; 

But  before  I  go,  Tom  Moore, 
Here's  a  double  health  to  thee! 


Tho'  the  ocean  roar  around  me, 
Yet  it  still  shall  bear  me  on ; 

Tho'  a  desert  should  surround  me, 
It  hath  springs  that  may  be  won. 

Were  it  the  last  drop  in  the  well, 

As  I  gasped  upon  the  brink, 
Ere  my  fainting  spirit  fell, 

'Tis  to  thee  that  I  would  drink. 

With  that  water,  as  this  wine, 

The  libation  I  would  pour 
Should  be — Peace  with  mine  and  thine, 

And  a  health  to  thee,  Tom  Moore! 

The  friendship,  thus  formed,  continued  un- 
broken until  the  untimely  death  of  Byron  and 
remains  one  of  the  most  interesting  in  the  his- 


ii2  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

tory  of  literary  intimacies.  Jeffrey  also  became 
a  firm  friend  of  Moore's,  and  many  years  after 
their  meeting  at  Chalk  Farm,  he  paid  the 
Irish  poet  this  tribute,  which  is  quite  as  strik- 
ing for  a  Scotch  incapacity  of  humour  as  for 
an  equally  Scotch  article  of  magnanimity: 

"He  has  long  ago  redeemed  his  error;  in 
all  his  later  works  he  appears  as  the  eloquent 
champion  of  purity,  fidelity  and  delicacy,  not 
less  than  of  justice,  liberty  and  honour." 


THOMAS  MOORE  113 

IX 

his  personality; 

WE  have  plenty  of  material  from  which  to 
relimn  the  personal  portrait  of  the 
Irish  Anacreon.  The  difficulty  is  only  in  the 
selection.  Jeffrey  speaks  of  the  inward  light 
of  his  mind  and  happily  describes  him  as  the 
"sweetest-blooded,  hopefullest  creature  that 
ever  set  fortune  at  defiance."  "I  never  re- 
ceived a  visit  from  him,"  says  the  keen  and 
captious  Leigh  Hunt,  "but  I  felt  as  if  I  had 
been  talking  with  Prior  or  Sir  Charles  Sed- 
ley."  From  Hunt  also  we  get  this  illuminat- 
ing touch:  "His  eyes  are  as  dark  and  fine 
as  you  would  wish  to  see  under  a  set  of  vine 
leaves;  his  mouth  generous  and  good-hu- 
moured with  dimples."  "Moore  is  the  only 
poet,"  says  Byron,  "whose  conversation  equals 
his  writings."  The  author  of  "Beppo"  and 
"Don  Juan"  was  too  fond  of  epigram  to  be 
uniformly  just  or   kind,   but   he    allows   the 


ii4  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

Irish  poet  to  share  with  Lord  Clare  the  mel- 
ancholy distinction  of  his  nearest  friendship 
— excluding  Hobhouse,  Shelley  and  the  rest. 

Jane  Welsh  Carlyle,  who  was  privileged 
beyond  most  women  to  speak,  used  to  say, 
"My  dear,  never  marry  a  man  of  genius." 
It  is  pleasant  to  turn  from  the  conjugal  in- 
felicities suggested  by  some  famous  names  to 
the  simple  happiness  that  inspired  this  entry 
in  Moore's  diary,  under  date  of  1844,  when 
the  poet  was  sixty-five  years  old :  "A  strange 
life  mine,  but  the  best  as  well  as  pleasantest 
part  of  it  lies  at  home.  I  told  my  dear  Bessie 
this  morning  that  while  I  stood  at  my  study 
window,  looking  out  at  her  as  she  crossed  the 
field,  I  sent  a  blessing  after  her.  'Thank 
you,  bird,'  she  replied,  'that's  better  than 
money';  and  so  it  is.  Bird  is  a  pet  name  she 
gave  me  in  our  younger  days." 

"Moore's  domestic  life,"  says  Lord  John 
Russell,  "gave  scope  to  the  best  parts  of  his 
character.  His  beautiful  wife  (she  was  so 
beautiful  that  Rogers  called  her  Psyche)  was 


THOMAS  MOORE  115 

a  treasure  of  inestimable  value  to  his  happi- 
ness." And  the  same  hand  testifies  that  to  the 
day  of  the  poet's  death  she  received  from  her 
husband  the  homage  of  a  lover. 

I'd  mourn  the  hopes  that  leave  me 

If  thy  smiles  had  left  me  too; 
I'd  weep  when  friends  deceive  me, 

If  thou  wert,  like  them,  untrue; 
But  while  I've  thee  before  me, 

With  heart  so  warm  and  eyes  so  bright, 
No  clouds  can  linger  o'er  me — 

That  smile  turns  them  all  to  light. 

"Three  women  have  loved  me,"  writes 
Renan;  "my  mother,  my  sister,  my  wife." 
Moore  felt  that  he  owed  all  to  his  mother,  an 
Irish  woman  of  the  best  though  humble  type, 
shrewd,  provident,  and  passionately  devoted 
to  her  gifted  son.  Out  of  very  small  means 
she  managed  to  procure  for  him  every  advan- 
tage of  education.  His  success  was,  in  large 
measure,  the  fruit  of  her  intelligent  thought 
and  sacrifice.  To  his  honor  be  it  set  down 
that  he  never  regarded  this  debt  of  gratitude 


u6  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

as  paid  by  the  zealous  and  affectionate  return 
which,  so  long  as  she  lived,  he  did  not  cease  to 
make  her. 

Washington  Irving  used  to  say  it  was  easier 
to  get  a  new  book  than  a  letter  from  our  poet. 
My  Lady  Bessington  solicited  correspond- 
ence with  most  of  the  famous  men  of  the  day. 
They  were  all  glad  to  write  to  her — Bulwer, 
Disraeli,  Savage  Landor,  Dickens  and  no  end 
of  celebrities.  She  was,  no  doubt,  a  charm- 
ing woman,  with  a  personal  fascination  which 
does  not  survive  in  her  literary  remains. 
Her  biographer  is  unable  to  offer  any  letters 
from  Tom  Moore  to  the  Countess,  though  he 
was  assiduously  courted  to  Gore  House. 
When  Moore's  mother  died  at  a  ripe  old  age, 
happy  in  seeing  her  Tom  higher  in  fame  and 
worldly  esteem  than  her  fond  heart  could 
ever  have  hoped  for  him  in  those  early,  hum- 
ble days  at  12  Aungier  street,  Dublin, — she 
had  four  thousand  letters  from  her  son! 

If  I  have  been  at  all  successful  in  gather- 


THOMAS  MOORE  117 

ing  here  and  there  a  hint  or  a  feature  to  make 
up  the  portrait  of  our  poet,  I  shall  be  happy 
should  the  reader  carry  away  from  these 
pages  such  a  likeness  as  presents  itself  to  my 
own  mind.  It  is  that  of  a  poet  whose  genius 
— the  rarest  and  purest  ever  given  to  an  Irish 
Celt — is,  I  believe,  in  its  essential  quality  and 
message,  without  a  peer  in  these  English 
centuries.  It  is  that  of  a  patriot  who  amid 
strong  temptations  preserved  the  freedom  of 
his  mind;  who  kept  his  principles  alike  in  the 
tumult  of  popular  clamour  and  the  polite 
sarcasm  of  the  drawing  room ;  who  was  never 
ashamed  of  his  country — a  luxury  that  has 
been  indulged  in  by  many  Irishmen,  immeas- 
urably inferior  to  him  in  character  and 
talents;  who  gave  to  his  country  his  best 
thought,  his  highest  inspiration,  and  laboured 
for  her  all  the  days  of  his  life.  We  have 
glanced  at  those  qualities  which  made  him 
beloved  in  his  home  and  in  the  near  circle  of 
his  friends.  As  to  the  rest,  he  stood  in  the 
full  centre  of  the  world's  admiring  regard 


u8  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

and  was  the  idol  of  two  generations  of  a  so- 
ciety as  brilliant  as  has  ever  existed: — 

Whose  humor  as  gay  as  the  firefly's  light, 
Played  round  every  subject  and  shone  as  it  played ; 

Whose  wit  in  the  combat,  as  gentle  as  bright, 
Ne'er  carried  a  heart-stain  away  on  its  blade. 

Finally,  I  take  him  to  illustrate  the  best 
possibilities  of  the  Irish  character, — a  gentle- 
man, the  finest,  maybe,  that  his  race  has  pro- 
duced. The  more  I  think  of  it,  the  more  I 
am  convinced  that  his  gentility — the  poise 
and  worth  and  true  integrity  of  his  character 
— was  only  a  less  admirable  thing  than  his 
poetry;  and,  as  being  more  susceptible  of 
worthy  imitation,  I  commend  it  to  some  per- 
sons of  his  own  nationality  who  have  put  a 
libel  and  a  stigma  upon  their  race  in  the 
graceless  labour  of  disparaging  him. 

"Of  two  things  all  who  knew  him  must 
have  been  persuaded,"  says  his  noble  friend 
and  biographer,  "the  one,  his  strong  feelings 
of  devotion,  his  aspirations,  his  longing  for 
immortality  and  his  submission  to  the  will  of 


THOMAS  MOORE  119 

God;  the  other,  his  love  of  his  neighbour,  his 
Samaritan  kindness  to  the  distressed,  his  good 
will  to  all  men." 

I  think  we  may  leave  him  in  the  light  of 
this  true  and  simple  judgment  drawn  by  one 
who  was  far  better  qualified  to  estimate  the 
worth  of  Moore  as  a  man  than  to  define  the 
message  of  his  genius,  the  abiding  value  of 
his  poetical  achievement.  That  in  just  and 
satisfactory  measure  is  yet  to  be  done.  Mine 
shall  not  be  the  hand  to  lift  the  veil  from  the 
sorrows  that  darkened  his  last  years.  The 
nightingale  drooped  in  the  heart  of  the  rose. 
I  know  of  few  things  more  pathetic  than  the 
poet's  own  account,  in  his  Diary,  of  how  he 
struggled  to  maintain  his  wonderful  buoyancy 
amid  the  coming-on  of  age,  the  slow  turning 
down  of  the  lights,  the  fading  of  his  enchanted 
world. 

So  soon  may  I  follow 

When  friendships  decay, 
And  from  love's  shining  circle 

The  gems  drop  away. 


120  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

When  true  hearts  lie  wither'd, 
And  warm  ones  are  flown, 

Oh,  who  would  inhabit 
This  bleak  world  alone! 

He  had  done  his  best  work  long  before  old 
age  came  upon  him;  and  all  ensuing  time,  I 
verily  believe,  will  take  little  from  his  fame. 


THOMAS  MOORE  121 


IRISH   PREJUDICE  AGAINST  MOORE— A 
FOOTNOTE 

THE  truth  as  to  this  rather  obscure  matter 
is,  that  Moore  has  long  suffered  from 
what  the  French  call  le  rancune  ecclesias- 
tique,  which  we  may  translate  simply  as 
priestly  spite,  because,  although  he  wrote  a 
book  in  defence  of  the  Roman  Catholic  re- 
ligion, his  personal  relations  toward  it  during 
the  greater  part  of  his  life  were  never  clearly 
defined.  Then  it  is  not  forgotten  that  he 
failed  to  convert  his  Protestant  wife  and  suf- 
fered his  children  to  be  brought  up  in  the 
English  church. 

The  rancor  ecclesiastical  has  a  long  mem- 
ory and  it  doubtless  recalls  the  letter  which 
Moore,  then  a  young  man  enjoying  the  friend- 
ship of  Lord  Moira,  addressed  to  the  Catho- 
lics of  Dublin  anent  some  proposals  of  the 
Whig  party  with  regard  to  the  nomination  of 


122  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

Irish  bishops.  Moore's  advice  was  practi- 
cally to  throw  the  Pope  overboard,  in  view  of 
the  compensating  advantages  which  were 
promised  to  Ireland.  It  is  likely  that  the 
letter  had  small  influence,  although  it  was  ad- 
mirably written  and  sprinkled  with  the 
choicest  Greek  and  Latin  quotations.  Moore 
was  then  fresh  from  college  and  not  averse  to 
airing  his  acquirements.  In  short,  the  letter 
fell  flat,  as  a  far  abler  document  would  have 
done,  carrying  the  same  propositions.  Cu- 
rious persons  will  find  it  in  the  supplementary 
volume  of  Moore's  prose  writings  which  was 
brought  out  in  this  country  some  years  ago, 
under  the  editorship  of  the  late  Richard 
Henry  Stoddard.  (The  same  volume  has 
even  better  things  than  this  Dublin  letter, — 
I  have  already  referred  to  that  delicious  frag- 
ment, "The  Chapter  of  the  Blanket,"  which 
is  very  much  more  interesting  than  the  poet's 
"History  of  Ireland.") 

It  seems   there   has   always   been   a   slight 


THOMAS  MOORE  123 

doubt  whether  Moore  died  in  the  Roman 
Catholic  faith,  the  faith  to  which  he  dedicated 
some  of  his  finest  poems  and  his  most  eloquent 
prose.  S.  C.  Hall  asserted  that  the  poet 
changed  his  religion  towards  the  close  of  his 
life,  but  Hall  was  not  a  competent  witness, 
owing  to  his  notorious  love  of  gossip.  How- 
beit,  it  is  good  to  learn  that  the  Committee 
having  the  Dublin  memorial  in  charge 
cleared  up  this  vexatious  point  to  its  own  sat- 
isfaction, relieving  Moore  of  the  imputation 
noted.  The  gravity  of  such  a  doubt,  in  Ire- 
land, can  hardly  be  overestimated. 

That  spirit  of  jealous  envy  of  talent  or  suc- 
cess, which  has  been  always  a  marked  Irish 
characteristic,  is  also  traceable  in  the  depre- 
ciation of  Moore.  So  you  will  find  most 
fifth-rate  Irish  literary  men  and  journalists 
agreed  that  Moore  was  not  a  first-rater.  In 
fact,  they  try  to  diminish  him  by  proposing 
as  his  equal  or  his  superior  such  a  poet  as 
Mangan  who,  whatever  his  merits, — and  they 


i24  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

are  occasionally  great, — is  scarcely  to  be  con- 
sidered in  the  same  class  with  Moore. 

My  own  opinion  is  that  two  or  three  of 
Moore's  melodies  are  worth  half  the  theology 
in  the  world,  and  that  all  the  wealth  of  Ire- 
land could  not  furnish  a  monument  to  equal 
his  just  poetic  fame.  But  I  am  glad  that  Ire- 
land has  accorded  this  recognition  signalised 
by  the  Dublin  memorial,  however  dilatory 
and  inadequate,  to  the  greatest  of  her  poets, 
the  most  finished  of  her  literary  men,  and  one 
of  the  best  and  sanest  of  her  patriots. 


JAMES  CLARENCE  MANGAN 

I  AM  to  speak  in  this  and  the  following 
essays  of  a  group  of  Irish  poets  and 
balladists  who  lived  and  suffered  and  had 
their  earthly  portion  toward  the  middle  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  There  are  many 
greater  and  prouder  names  than  theirs  on  the 
roll  of  literary  renown.  Even  the  passionate 
love  of  country  which  inspired  them  is  not 
perhaps  so  sure  of  appreciation  now  as  it  was 
in  their  own  day.  I  have  not  been  repelled 
from  my  choice  of  subject  by  the  fact  that 
Irish  patriotism  has  been  occasionally  vul- 
garised here  and  abroad.  No  nation  is  al- 
ways fortunate  in  its  exponents,  but  the  re- 
proach will  lie  heaviest  on  that  unfriended 
and  oppressed  nation  which  has  never  ceased 
to  struggle  during  more  than  seven  hundred 

years  for  its  lost  birthright  of  freedom.     The 

125 


126  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

men  of  whom  I  am  to  speak,  with  their  gift 
of  poesy,  expressed  the  devoted  aspiration  of 
Irish  patriotism.  That  word  may  not  ring 
as  true  as  once  it  did, — but  no  matter:  I  be- 
lieve they  voiced  the  sacred  hope  of  many 
thousands  of  their  race,  of  whom  the  earth 
was  not  worthy.  We  shall  do  well  to  honour 
that  hope,  of  whatever  race  we  may  be, 
though  we  need  not  share  it. 

It  has  been  said  that  Carlyle's  "French  Rev- 
olution" gives  the  effect  of  reading  history  by 
flashes  of  lightning.  An  obscure  and  genius- 
cursed  Irishman,  who  walked  the  streets  of 
Dublin  some  sixty  years  ago,  does  the  like  for 
us  with  his  poetry. 

Recently  a  reviewer  in  the  London  Spec- 
tator called  James  Clarence  Mangan  the 
greatest  Irish  poet  of  modern  times.  Com- 
paring the  adjective  "great1'  is  the  idlest  oc- 
cupation of  literary  criticism.  But  it  is  cer- 
tain that  Mangan  has  left  some  things  which 
evince  extraordinary  power  and  a  quality  of 


JAMES  CLARENCE  MANGAN     127 

imagination  rare  among  Irish  poets.  His 
poems  send  you  to  Irish  history,  seeking  the 
materials  with  which  he  wrought  his  strange 
alembic  of  passion  and  power.  They  are 
alive  with  the  genuine  spirit  of  Celtic  patriot- 
ism and  have  the  elemental  quality  which  is 
sure  of  its  effect  so  long  as  fire  burns.  With 
Mangan,  indeed,  patriotism  is  a  passionate, 
present  actuality;  with  Moore  too  often  a 
graceful  reminiscence.  What  the  former 
lacks  in  music  is  more  than  made  up  in  vigour 
and  earnestness,  also  in  what  I  may  call  the 
sense  of  consecration.  He  is  the  last  of  the 
Irish  bards.  Had  he  lived  in  the  spacious 
times  of  the  gentle  Elizabeth,  a  price  would 
have  been  set  on  his  head.  The  statute  of  Kil- 
kenny was  framed  for  such  as  he,  and  it  was 
with  his  prototypes  in  mind  that  the  humane 
author  of  the  "Faery  Queene"  advocated  the 
extermination  of  the  whole  race  of  Irish  bards ! 
I  have  said  that  Mangan's  poems  send  you 
to  reading  Irish  history.  Perhaps  it  were 
better  to  take  your  history  lesson  first.     And 


128  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

for  the  text  here  is  a  picture  of  Ireland  at  the 
close  of  the  Desmond  rebellion,  in  the  six- 
teenth century.  It  is  by  the  hand  of  Edmund 
Spenser  who,  in  spite  of  his  evident  sympathy, 
was  not  averse  from  sharing  in  the  plunder  of 
a  people  given  over  to  the  Furies  of  that  cruel 
age: 

"For,  notwithstanding  that  Munster  was  a 
most  rich  and  plentiful  country,  full  of  corn 
and  cattle,  yet  after  one  year  and  one  half, 
they  were  brought  to  such  wretchedness  that 
any  stony  heart  would  rue  the  same.  Out  of 
every  corner  of  the  woods  and  glens  they 
came,  creeping  forth  upon  their  hands,  for 
their  legs  could  not  bear  them.  They  looked 
like  anatomies  of  death;  they  spoke  like 
ghosts  crying  out  of  their  graves.  They  did 
eat  the  dead  carrions  where  they  did  find 
them,  yea,  and  one  another  soon  after,  in  as 
much  as  the  very  carcasses  they  spared  not  to 
dig  out  of  the  graves ;  and  if  they  found  a  plot 
of  water-cresses  or  shamrocks,  there  they 
thronged  as  to  a  feast  for  the  time,  yet  not 


JAMES  CLARENCE  MANGAN     129 

able  to  continue  there  withal;  that  in  short 
space  there  were  none  almost  left;  and  a  most 
populous  and  plentiful  country  left  void  of 
man  and  beast." 

One  should,  I  repeat,  take  a  course  in  Irish 
history — or  English  history  as  applied  to  Ire- 
land— before  reading  the  poems  of  Clarence 
Mangan.  It  is,  perhaps,  a  little  trouble- 
some, sympathy  with  the  Irish  patriotic  idea 
having  fallen  off  painfully  during  late  years; 
but  this  poet  is  well  worth  your  trying  to 
realise  his  "atmosphere."  So,  read  that  sad- 
dest of  all  histories,  for  the  sake  of  its  poetical 
commentary.  Read  of  the  foulest  crimes 
against  liberty  and  humanity  that  the  earth 
has  ever  known;  read  how  the  cause  of  Chris- 
tianity was  invoked  to  destroy  a  free  people; 
read  how  the  Ireland  of  Saints  was  turned 
into  a  vast  shambles;  how  during  years  of 
slaughter  nor  man  nor  woman  nor  prattling 
child  nor  babe  at  breast — yes,  nor  the  un- 
conscious life  of  the  womb! — was  spared  by 
the  ruthless   invader.     Read  how  the   treaty 


130  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

was  broken  ere  the  ink  could  dry;  how  the 
fealty  of  this  devoted  people  in  their  ancient 
faith,  identified  through  the  fatal  policy  of 
their  oppressors  with  the  spirit  of  nationality 
itself,  was  made  the  pretext  for  their  utter 
ruin.  Read  how  the  flower  of  Irish  woman- 
hood was  driven  from  the  land  to  a  fate  worse 
than  death  itself  in  the  West  Indies;  how  the 
strong  young  men,  the  best  blood  of  the  na- 
tion, chose  for  themselves  a  perpetual  exile 
rather  than  look  upon  the  desolation  of  their 
country;  how  the  rest  might  go  "to  Hell  or 
Connaught,"  as  they  chose! 

After  struggling  through  the  horrors  of 
each  English  "settlement,"  from  Strongbow 
to  Cromwell,  through  the  long  night  of  bond- 
age relieved  here  and  there  by  ebullitions  of 
the  national  spirit  or  flashes  of  Irish  valor, 
such  as  the  splendid  story  of  Limerick  and 
the  heroism  of  Sarsfield, — from  Cromwell  to 
Grattan  and  the  Volunteers,  the  brief  dream 
of  a  free  Parliament,  the  revolt  of  'Ninety- 
eight  stamped  out  in  a  delirium  of  frenzy  and 


JAMES  CLARENCE  MANGAN     131 

blood,  and  the  crowning  curse  of  the  Union, 
— after  this  gentle  course  in  the  conquest  of 
Ireland,  beginning  with  Adrian's  Bull  and 
ending — but  the  end  is  not  yet! — we  are  pre- 
pared for  the  fierce  burst  of  lyrical  passion, 
the  most  remarkable  thing  in  the  "  'Forty- 
eight  Movement,"  which  was  indeed,  from 
the  standpoint  of  insurrection,  less  than  a 
flash  in  the  pan. 

Such  is  the  annulling  lapse  of  time  that 
even  Irishmen  are  now  prone  to  look  back 
upon  these  things  with  a  calm  regard.  But 
that  is  not  the  mood  to  bring  to  the  poetry  of 
Clarence  Mangan,  whose  melancholy  genius 
fed  on  the  wrongs  of  his  beloved  Ierne  until 
its  one  strain  was  that  of  vengeance  against 
the  hereditary  oppressor.  It  is  this  un- 
quenchable hatred  of  the  tyrant,  this  immor- 
tal aspiration  of  the  patriot,  that  finds  its 
freest  and  noblest  utterance  in  "Dark  Rosa- 
leen,"  which,  if  Mangan  had  written  nothing 
else,  would  still  entitle  him  to  a  high  place  in 
Ireland's  pantheon  of  glory.     To  the  rhythm 


132  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

of  these  lines  the  terrible  drama  of  Irish  his- 
tory unrolls.  The  twentieth  century  gives 
place  to  the  sixteenth.  The  O'Neil  and  the 
O'Donnel  come  upon  the  stage  and  fight  once 
more  their  glorious  but  losing  battle.  And 
it  requires  no  stretch  of  fancy  to  hear  the 
dauntless  Red  Hugh  himself,  in  the  dread 
moment  of  defeat,  speaking  this  message  of 
hope  to  his  unhappy  country: 

O,  my  dark  Rosaleen, 

Do  not  sigh,  do  not  weep! 
The  priests  are  on  the  ocean  green, 

They  march  along  the  deep: 
There's  wine  from  the  Royal  Pope 

Upon  the  ocean  green, 
And  Spanish  ale  shall  give  you  hope, 

My  dark  Rosaleen! 

My  own  Rosaleen ! 
Shall  glad  your  heart,  shall  give  you  hope, 
Shall  give  you  health,  and  help,  and  hope, 

My  dark  Rosaleen ! 

Over  hills  and  thro'  dales, 

Have  I  roamed  for  your  sake; 


JAMES  CLARENCE  MANGAN     133 

All  yesterday  I  sailed  with  sails 

On  river  and  on  lake. 
The  Erne  at  its  highest  flood, 

I  dashed  across  unseen, 
For  there  was  lightning  in  my  blood, 

My  dark  Rosaleen! 

My  own  Rosaleen ! 
O,  there  was  lightning  in  my  blood, 
Red  lightning  lightened  thro'  my  blood, 

My  dark  Rosaleen! 

All  day  long,  in  unrest, 

To  and  fro  do  I  move* 
The  very  soul  within  my  breast 

Is  wasted  for  you,  love! 
The  heart  in  my  bosom  faints 

To  think  of  you,  my  queen, 
My  life  of  life,  my  saint  of  saints, 

My  dark  Rosaleen! 

My  own  Rosaleen! 
To  hear  your  sweet  and  sad  complaints, 
My  life,  my  love,  my  saint  of  saints, 

My  dark  Rosaleen! 

I  could  scale  the  blue  air, 

I  could  plough  the  high  hills, 


i34  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

O,  I  could  kneel  all  night  in  prayer, 

To  heal  your  many  ills; 
And  one  beamy  smile  from  you 

Would  float  like  light  between 
My  toils  and  me,  my  own,  my  true, 

My  dark  Rosaleen ! 

My  own  Rosaleen! 
Would  give  me  life  and  soul  anew, 
A  second  life,  a  soul  anew, 

My  dark  Rosaleen! 

O!  the  Erne  shall  run  red 

With  redundancy  of  blood, 
The  earth  shall  rock  beneath  our  feet 

And  flames  wrap  hill  and  wood, 
And  gun-peal  and  slogan-cry 

Wake  many  a  glen  serene, 
Ere  you  shall  fade,  ere  you  shall  die, 

My  dark  Rosaleen! 

My  own  Rosaleen! 
The  Judgment  Hour  must  first  be  nigh, 
Ere  you  can  fade,  ere  you  can  die, 

My  dark  Rosaleen ! 


JAMES  CLARENCE  MANGAN     135 

II 

A  MILITANT  POET 

I  NEED  not  here  recall  the  effect  of  Man- 
gan's  fiercely  militant  verse  in  the  crises  of 
sentiment  that  led  up  to  the  glorious  though 
defeated  movement  of  '48.  When  he  is  at  his 
best,  he  typifies  and  enforces  the  undying 
hope  of  Irish  patriotism.  He  has  no  idea  of 
placating  the  alien  oppressor  or  his  patronis- 
ing descendant.  The  "sigh  of  his  harp"  shall 
not  be  "sent  o'er  the  deep,"  but  the  fierce  note 
of  unconquerable  hatred  shall  be  struck  for 
all  who  care  to  hear.  If  he  laments  at  all,  it 
is  that  the  stern  fight  cannot  be  fought  over 
again,  that  vainly  he  conjures  the  names  and 
deeds  of  the  hero  brave. 

The  high  house  of  O'Neil 

Is  gone  down  to  the  dust, 
The  O'Brien  is  clanless  and  banned: 

And  the  steel,  the  red  steel, 
May  no  more  be  the  trust 

Of  the  faithful  and  brave  in  the  land! 


136  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

Patriotism  is,  in  truth,  the  grand  passion  of 
this  poet.  Unlike  most  of  his  rhyming 
brethren,  he  has  hardly  a  love  song,  and  what 
he  has  is  none  of  his  best.  Erin  is  his  mis- 
tress and,  addressing  her,  as  in  "Dark  Rosa- 
leen,"  he  strikes  the  highest  note  of  his  harp. 
Nothing  languid  or  factitious  about  the  senti- 
ment, but  an  impassioned  earnestness  that 
challenges  the  blood  even  where  sympathy  is 
lacking. 

No  Irish  poet  before  Mangan  rivals  him  in 
the  use  which  he  has  made  of  the  wild  ro- 
mance and  legend  of  his  country.  It  is  true 
his  work  is  but  fragmentary — a  series  of 
poetical  sketches  scarcely  to  be  equalled  for 
vivid  colour  and  genuine  feeling.  There  is 
no  orderly  whole,  like  the  cycle  of  Arthurian 
fables  that  grew  into  immortal  poetic  form 
under  the  perfect  art  of  Tennyson — so  per- 
fect in  nothing  as  in  its  patience.  Mangan, 
whose  own  life  was  a  tragedy,  never  at- 
tempted epic  or  idyl.  Yet  the  poor  hack  of 
the  Dublin  publishing  offices,  with  his  fatal 


JAMES  CLARENCE  MANGAN     137 

appetite  for  drink  and  drugs,  was  in  original 
genius  the  peer  of  any  man  of  his  time.  For 
genius  must  be  gauged  by  quality  rather  than 
quantity  of  performance;  and  art  is  second  in 
order. 

Swinburne  has  said  that,  judged  by  epi- 
sodes solely  and  not  by  the  whole  of  any 
work,  the  author  of  the  "Cloister  and  the 
Hearth"  is  the  first  of  English  novelists.  In 
like  manner,  estimating  Mangan  by  a  few 
poems,  his  rank  would  be  of  the  highest. 
But  consistent  effort  and  that  atmosphere  of 
tranquil  thought  which  alone  matures  the  fruit 
of  the  poetical  conception,  were  not  for  the 
gifted  Irishman.  Intervals  of  study  and  la- 
bour were  followed  by  such  squalid  dissipa- 
tion— always  accompanied,  perhaps  often 
induced,  by  poverty  which  more  than  once 
drew  him  to  the  verge  of  starving — that  the 
annals  of  Grub  Street  might  be  searched  in 
vain  for  a  story  of  equal  misery.  Poor  Man- 
gan's  feasts  were  not  seldom  of  the  Barmecide 
order;   but,    as    genius   sometimes    draws    its 


138  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

most  precious  food  from  privation  and  pain, 
so  if  our  poet  had  lived  a  contented,  reputable 
life,  he  would  most  likely  have  made  a  less 
durable  mark  in  literature.  Assuredly  we 
should  not  have  had  that  fearful  poem  "The 
Nameless  One,"  in  which  the  poet  bares  his 
own  soul  and  shows  the  fiends  with  which  his 
half-crazed  imagination — yet  sane  enough  for 
the  purposes  of  art — had  peopled  it.  This  is 
not  a  pose.  It  is  a  true  confession,  as  pathetic 
as  ever  was  penned  by  a  man  of  genius. 

Roll  forth,  my  song,  like  the  rushing  river 

That  sweeps  along  to  the  mighty  sea; 
God  will  inspire  me  while  I  deliver 

My  soul  of  thee. 

*  *     # 

And  tell  how  trampled,  derided,  hated, 

And  worn  by  weakness,  disease  and  wrong, 
He  fled  for  shelter  to  God,  who  mated 

His  soul  with  song. 

*  *     * 

And  he  fell  far  thro'  that  pit  abysmal, 
The  gulf  and  grave  of  Maginn  and  Burns, 

And  pawned  his  soul  for  the  devil's  dismal 
Stock  of  returns. 


JAMES  CLARENCE  MANGAN     139 

But  yet  redeemed  it  in  days  of  darkness, 
And  shapes  and  signs  of  the  final  wrath, 

When  death,  in  hideous  and  ghastly  starkness, 
Stood  in  his  path. 

And  tell  how  now,  amid  wreck  and  sorrow, 
And  want,  and  sickness,  and  houseless  nights, 

He  bides  in  calmness  the  silent  morrow 
That  no  ray  lights! 

There  is  a  strange  likeness  between  the 
lives  of  James  Clarence  Mangan  and  Edgar 
Allan  Poe;  but  that  of  the  Irishman  was  one 
of  more  unredeemed  wretchedness.  Some 
critics  have  traced  a  curious  identity  in  the 
genius  of  the  men.  Taking  into  account  only 
the  verse  of  Poe,  I  shall  make  bold  to  hold 
the  Irishman  the  greater  poet.  He  has  less 
artifice  in  matching  rhymes,  but  he  has  vastly 
more  power  and  a  far  larger  share  of  natural 
feeling.  Mangan's  sincerity  is  his  distin- 
guishing note,  and  it  is  not  the  least  estimable 
of  poetic  qualities. 

Under  the  Moresque  work  of  the  Irish 
singer,  with  its  rune-like  cadences,  its  haunt- 


i4o  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

ing  strains  of  elegy  and  battle,  its  crooning 
tenderness  or  blighting  messages  of  anger, 
there  glows  as  noble  a  passion  as  ever  conse- 
crated poet  to  its  theme.  Never  was  crowned 
monarch  better  sung  than  Con  of  the  Hun- 
dred Fights;  never  have  heroic  valour  and 
devotion  received  grander  tribute  than  he 
pays  to  the  knightly  Tyrone  and  the  Red 
Prince  of  the  North,  twinned  with  him  in 
immortal  memory. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  fidelity  with  which 
Mangan  realises  the  lurid  yet  heroic  past  of 
Ireland.  In  this  respect,  he  seems  at  times 
the  greatest  of  her  poets  and  the  most  vivid  of 
her  historians.  It  is  impossible  that  any  fu- 
ture poet  shall  better  his  work;  it  is  indeed 
more  likely  that  none  will  ever  approach  it. 
The  bardic  spirit  of  ancient  Erin  breathes  in 
these  thrilling  songs,  though  it  may  be 
doubted  that  he  owed  much  to  the  forgotten 
minstrels,  some  of  whom  he  affected  to  render 
into  an  alien  tongue. 

Mangan  rarely  sounded  the  high  note  which 


JAMES  CLARENCE  MANGAN    141 

he  struck  in  "Dark  Rosaleen,"  or  perhaps  it  is 
truer  to  say  that  he  often  essayed,  sometimes 
touched,  the  note,  but  the  perfection  of  form, 
so  victorious  in  the  poem  cited,  failed  his 
hand.  Yet  "Dark  Rosaleen"  is  not  to  be  ac- 
counted the  single  success  of  a  minor  poet. 
Mangan  tells  us  in  one  of  his  poems,  with  the 
fine  exaggeration  of  the  Celt,  that  his  "veins 
ran  lightning."  Thomas  Davis,  worthy  to  be 
ranked  with  him,  speaks  of  the  "cloudy  and 
lightning  genius  of  the  Gael."  Davis,  a  poet 
of  splendid  inspiration,  though  not  a  pure 
Celt,  exemplifies  in  his  own  work  the  quality 
which  he  has  so  happily  characterised.  But 
the  palm  goes  to  Mangan.  By  virtue  of  his 
purely  Celtic  genius — which  so  signally  dis- 
criminates him  from  the  body  of  Anglo-Irish 
versifiers  and  even  from  most  poets  of  un- 
mixed Irish  lineage  who  have  written  in  the 
English  tongue, — the  fame  of  Clarence  Man- 
gan is  constantly  rising.  Within  a  few  years 
there  has  been  witnessed  an  extraordinary  re- 
crudescence of  interest  in  the  poor  starveling, 


i42  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

drunken,  opium-eating,  inspired  visionary  of 
the  Dublin  garrets.  It  must  in  fairness  be 
allowed  that  Mangan  stands  indebted  for  his 
recent  great  increase  of  literary  reputation  to 
the  authority  of  a  small  group  of  critics  in 
England — where  due  tribute  is  always  paid 
the  virtues  of  an  enemy  when  he  is  well  and 
surely  dead. 

One  of  the  very  finest  of  Clarence  Man- 
gan's  truly  Irish  poems,  in  which  the  poet 
paints  a  vision  of  Connaught  in  the  thirteenth 
century  and  at  the  same  time  allegorises  the 
great  tragedy  of  Ireland,  the  loss  of  her 
ancient  freedom, — is  "Cahal  Mor  of  the 
Wine-Red  Hand."  Indeed,  it  might  not  be 
easy  to  cite  another  poem  from  the  Irish  an- 
thology, matching  this  in  the  strong  spell  cast 
by  the  poet's  imagination. 

I  walked  entranced 

Thro'  a  land  of  morn; 
The  sun,  with  wondrous  excess  of  light, 
Shone  down  and  glanced 

Over  seas  of  corn, 


JAMES  CLARENCE  MANGAN     143 

And  lustrous  gardens  a-left  and  right. 
Even  in  the  clime 
Of  resplendent  Spain 
Beams  no  such  sun  upon  such  a  land; 
But  it  was  the  time, 
'Twas  in  the  reign, 
Of  Cahal  Mor  of  the  Wine-red  Hand. 

Anon  stood  nigh 
By  my  side  a  man 
Of  princely  aspect  and  port  sublime. 
Him  queried  I, 

"O,  my  lord  and  khan, 
What  clime  is  this,  and  what  golden  time?" 
When  he — "The  clime 
Is  a  clime  to  praise, 
The  clime  is  Erin's,  the  green,  the  bland; 
And  it  is  the  time, 
These  be  the  days 
Of  Cahal  Mor  of  the  Wine-red  Hand!" 

Then  I  saw  thrones 
And  circling  fires, 
And  a  dome  rose  near  me,  as  by  a  spell, 
Whence  flowed  the  tones 
Of  silver  lyres 
And  many  voices  in  wreathed  swell; 


144  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

And  their  thrilling  chime 
Fell  on  mine  ears 
As  the  heavenly  hymn  of  an  angel-band — 
"It  is  now  the  time, 
These  be  the  years, 
Of  Cahal  Mor  of  the  Wine-red  Hand !" 

I  sought  the  hall, 

And  behold! — a  change 
From  light  to  darkness,  from  joy  to  woe! 
Kings,  nobles,  all, 

Looked  aghast  and  strange; 
The  minstrel-group  sate  in  dumbest  show! 
Had  some  great  crime 

Wrought  this  dread  amaze, 
This  terror?     None  seemed  to  understand. 
'Twas  then  the  time, 
We  were  in  the  days, 
Of  Cahal  Mor  of  the  Wine-red  Hand. 

I  again  walked  forth; 
But  lo,  the  sky 
Showed  flecked  with  blood,  and  an  alien  sun 
Glared  from  the  north, 

And  there  stood  on  high, 
Amid  his  shorn  beams,  a  skeleton! 


JAMES  CLARENCE  MANGAN     145 

It  was  by  the  stream 
Of  the  castled  Main, 
One  autumn-eve,  in  the  Teuton's  land, 
That  I  dreamed  this  dream 
Of  the  time  and  reign 
Of  Cahal  Mor  of  the  Wine-red  Hand ! 

Reading  these  poems  now,  in  the  present 
dead  lull  of  indifference  which  marks  the 
state  of  Irish  patriotic  sentiment,  one  is 
moved  to  a  deeper  interest  than  if  the  national 
hope  were  marching  on  irresistibly  to  that 
full  fruition  of  freedom,  so  often  promised 
by  poet  and  seer.  It  is  not  that  the  cause  is 
lost,  but  that  it  appears  more  often  now  than 
formerly  as  not  worth  a  struggle. 

We  have  fallen  upon  evil  days, 
Star  after  star  decays. 

Yet  it  may  be  that  history  has  but  reached 
a  breathing  place,  and  that  from  this  seeming 
decadence  of  the  national  aspiration  of  Ire- 
land shall  spring  forth  a  new  and  richer 
birth   of   patriotism   than   even   this   devoted 


146  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

people  have  ever  known.  God  grant  it! — 
and  God  knows  He  has  never  been  so  trusted 
as  by  this  people.  Though  the  words  of 
Walt  Whitman  are  true,  and  that  which  the 
sorrowing  ancient  mother  seeks, 

"with  rosy  and  new  blood, 
Moves  to-day  in  a  new  country," — 

yet  the  sons  of  the  Gael  here  in  this  broad, 
free  land,  and  all  of  them  scattered  the  world 
over,  will  not  cease  to  look  back  to  Ireland 
for  the  final  proof  of  God's  justice.  And 
pending  that  solemn  act  for  which  the  weary 
centuries  have  waited,  what  son  of  the  Gael 
will  not  join  with  the  poet,  whose  feet  never 
strayed  from  her  enchanted  shore,  in  these 
tender  greetings  to  "old  Erin  in  the  sea": — 

Take  a  blessing  from  my  heart  to  the  land  of  my  birth, 

And  the  fair  Hills  of  Eire,  O! 
And  to  all  that  yet  survive  of  Ebhear's  tribe  on  earth, 

On  the  fair  Hills  of  Eire,  O! 
In  that  land  so  delightful  the  wild  thrush's  lay 
Seems  to  pour  a  lament  forth  for  Eire's  decay — 


JAMES  CLARENCE  MANGAN     147 

Alas!  Alas!  why  pine  I  a  thousand  miles  away 
From  the  fair  Hills  of  Eire,  O! 


The  soil  is  rich  and  soft — the  air  is  mild  and  bland, 

Of  the  fair  Hills  of  Eire,  O! 
Her  barest  rock  is  greener  to  me  than  this  rude  land — 

O,  the  fair  Hills  of  Eire,  O ! 
Her  woods  are  tall  and  straight,  grove  rising  over  grove ; 
Trees  flourish   in   her  glens  below,   and   on  her  heights 

above ; — 
O,  in  heart  and  in  soul,  I  shall  ever,  ever  love 

The  fair  Hills  of  Eire,  O! 


"> 


The  dewdrops  lie  bright  'mid  the  grass  and  yellow  corn, 

On  the  fair  Hills  of  Eire,  O! 
The  sweet-scented  apples  blush  redly  in  the  morn, 

On  the  fair  Hills  of  Eire,  O! 
The  watercress  and  sorrel  fill  the  vales  below; 
The  streamlets  are  hushed  till  the  evening  breezes  blow; 
While  the  waves  of  the  Suir,  noble  river!  ever  flow 

Near  the  fair  Hills  of  Eire,  O! 

A  fruitful  clime  is  Eire's,  thro'  valley,  meadow,  plain, 

And  the  fair  land  of  Eire,  O! 
The  very  "Bread  of  Life"  is  in  the  yellow  grain, 

On  the  fair  Hills  of  Eire,  O! 


148  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

Far  dearer  unto  me  than  the  tone  music  yields, 
Is  the  lowing  of  the  kine  and  the  calves  in  her  fields, 
And  the  sunlight  that  shone  long  ago  on  the  shields 
Of  the  Gaels,  on  the  fair  Hills  of  Eire! 


THOMAS  OSBORNE  DAVIS 

HpO  the  revolutionary  spirit  which  filled 
-*■  Europe  during  the  'zj-o's  and  which  in 
Ireland  culminated  in  what  is  known  as  the 
"  'Forty-eight  Movement,"  is  to  be  ascribed 
some  of  the  most  spirited  verse  of  the  last 
century.  Happily  perhaps  for  Ireland,  the 
interest  which  now  centres  in  that  period  is 
largely  of  a  literary  character,  as  indeed  its 
results  were  rather  literary  than  political. 
There  was  good  poetry  written,  but  no  revo- 
lution had  to  be  stamped  out  in  blood,  as  in 
the  memorable  year  of  1798.  "Meagher  of 
the  Sword"  (as  Thackeray  named  him)  and 
others  gave  proof  of  a  new  birth  of  Irish  elo- 
quence, while  the  great  O'Connell,  who  would 
not  purchase  the  liberty  of  his  country  at  the 
cost  of  a  single  drop  of  blood,  began  to  de- 
cline in  his  marvellous  popularity. 

149 


150  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

For  a  time  the  Government  suffered  this 
patriotic  and  literary  recrudescence  to  go  on, 
and  then  when,  in  the  phrase  of  the  patriots, 
the  "country  was  ripe  for  revolution,"  the 
machinery  of  suppression  was  put  to  work. 
There  was  very  little  blood-letting.  What- 
ever the  bitter  regret  then,  we  may  be  glad  of 
it  now.  A  few  summary  trials  and  transpor- 
tations, and  it  was  all  over.  "New  Ireland" 
was  discovered  to  be  a  euphemism  for  Botany 
Bay.  The  fatalism  of  Irish  history  had 
again  asserted  itself.  In  less  figurative  lan- 
guage, it  was  demonstrated  that  you  cannot 
make  successful  revolution  on  paper,  and 
that  something  more  than  sentiment  is  re- 
quired with  which  to  arm  a  whole  people  for 
a  war  of  liberation.  John  Mitchel  had  said 
with  fierce  scorn  that  there  were  men  who 
would  not  fight  if  Heaven  were  to  send  them 
muskets  and  angels  to  pull  the  triggers! 
The  truth  was  that  a  rebel  Irish  army  could 
hardly  have  been  equipped  on  any  other 
terms. 


THOMAS  OSBORNE  DAVIS     151 

A  brief  space  before  this  revolutionary 
fever  flickered  out,  there  died  untimely  a 
man  who  had  created  much  of  its  patriotic 
ardour,  much  of  its  generous  and  devoted  en- 
thusiasm. Had  he  lived,  Thomas  Davis 
would  have  found  a  place  beside  Mitchel  in 
the  dock — it  may  be  the  tragedy  of  the  "last 
of  the  Geraldines"  *  had  been  repeated.  Dy- 
ing at  thirty-one,  the  grave  closed  over  one 
of  the  noblest  of  Irish  patriots,  one  of  the 
most  memorable  of  Irish  singers. 

It  is  true  Davis  would  not  have  been  con- 
tent to  be  reckoned  merely  a  poet,  vital  and 
authentic  as  was  his  literary  vocation.  His 
poems  were  written  in  hot  haste  to  serve  the 
propaganda  of  revolution.  There  is  about 
them  no  smell  of  the  lamp,  no  anxious  striv- 
ing for  effect,  no  conscious  artifice  or  allitera- 
tion. The  burning  sincerity  of  the  senti- 
ment, the  full  outpouring  of  passionate  pa- 
triotism left  little  leisure  to  the  poet  for  the 

•Lord   Edward   Fitzgerald,   concerned   in   the   rising   of   1798. 
Died  from  a  wound  in  prison  at  Dublin. 


152  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

labours  of  the  file.  Davis's  inspiration  is  that 
of  a  true  poet  of  revolution.  Mere  blemishes 
of  form  are  not  far  to  seek  in  the  body  of  his 
work,  but  in  the  "imperishable  excellence  of 
sincerity  and  strength,"  much  of  this  verse  is 
not  to  be  surpassed  in  the  whole  range  of 
poetry. 

Davis  has  at  least  one  glorious  ballad  of 
battle — the  finest  I  dare  say  since  that  of 
"Chevy  Chase" — which  I  would  beg  you  to 
compare  with  the  best  performances  of  Mr. 
Kipling  and  his  imitators.  It  was  nobly 
said  that  the  old  ballad  of  "Chevy  Chase" 
"stirred  the  heart  like  a  trumpet":  for  the 
splendid  rush  of  Davis's  verse,  you  must  pick 
a  simile  from  the  poem  itself,  in  the  lightning 
charge  of  the  Irish  Brigade  at  Fontenoy — 
his  own  Fontenoy,  the  fiercest,  truest  song  of 
battle  that  ever  sprang  from  the  heart  of 
poet. 

Thrice,  at  the  huts  of  Fontenoy,  the  English  column  failed, 
And,  twice,  the  lines  of  Saint  Antoine,  the  Dutch  in  vain 
assailed ; 


THOMAS  OSBORNE  DAVIS     153 

For  town  and  slope  were  filled  with  fort  and  flanking  bat- 
tery, 

And  well  they  swept  the  English  ranks,  and  Dutch  auxil- 
iary. 

As  vainly  through  De  Berri's  woods,  the  British  soldiers 
burst, 

The  French  artillery  drove  them  back,  diminished  and  dis- 
persed, 

The  bloody  Duke  of  Cumberland  beheld  with  anxious  eye, 

And  ordered  up  his  last  reserve,  his  latest  chance  to  try. 

On  Fontenoy — on  Fontenoy,  how  fast  his  generals  ride! 

And  mustering  come  his  chosen  troops,  like  clouds  at  even- 
tide. 

Six  thousand  English  veterans  in  stately  column  tread, 
Their  cannon  blaze  in  front  and  flank,  Lord  Hay  is  at 

their  head ; 
Steady  they  step  adown  the  slope — steady  they  climb  the 

hill ; 
Steady  they  load — steady  they  fire,  moving  right  onward 

still, 
Betwixt  the  wood  and  Fontenoy,  as  thro'  a  furnace  blast, 
Thro'  rampart,  trench  and  palisade,  and  bullets  showering 

fast  ; 
And   on   the  open  plain  above  they   rose  and  kept  their 

course, 


154  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

With  ready  fire  and  grim  resolve,  that  mocked  at  hostile 

force : 
Past  Fontenoy — past  Fontenoy,  while  thinner  grow  their 

ranks — 
They    break   as   broke   the   Zuyder   Zee   thro'   Holland's 

ocean  banks. 

More  idly  than  the  summer  flies,  French  tirailleurs  rush 

round : 
As  stubble  to  the  lava  tide,  French  squadrons  strew  the 

ground ; 
Bomb-shell  and  grape,  and  round-shot  tore,  still  on  they 

marched  and  fired — 
Fast  from  each  volley,  grenadier  and  voltigeur  retired. 
"Push   on    my    household    cavalry!"    King   Louis   madly 

cried; 
To  death  they  rush,  but  rude  their  shock — not  unavenged 

they  died. 
On  thro'  the  camp  the  column  trod — King  Louis  turns 

his  rein: 
"Not  yet,  my  liege,"  Saxe  interposed,  "the  Irish  troops 

remain  I" 
And  Fontenoy,  famed  Fontenoy,  had  been  a  Waterloo, 
Were   not  these   exiles  ready   then,  fresh,   vehement  and 

true. 


THOMAS  OSBORNE  DAVIS     155 

"Lord  Clare,"  he  says,  "you  have  your  wish,  there  are 
your  Saxon  foes": — 

The  Marshal  almost  smiles  to  see,  so  furiously  he  goes. 

How  fierce  the  look  these  exiles  wear  who're  wont  to  be 
so  gay, 

The  treasured  wrongs  of  fifty  years  are  in  their  hearts, 
to-day : — 

The  treaty  broken  ere  the  ink  wherewith  'twas  writ  could 
dry, — 

Their  plundered  homes,  their  ruined  shrines,  their 
women's  parting  cry, — 

Their  priesthood  hunted  down  like  wolves,  their  coun- 
try overthrown, — 

Each  looks  as  if  revenge  for  all  were  staked  on  him  alone. 

On  Fontenoy,  on  Fontenoy,  hark  to  that  fierce  huzza — 

"Revenge! — Remember  Limerick! — Dash  down  the  Sas- 
senach !" 

Like   lions  leaping  at  a   fold  when   mad  with  hunger's 

pang, 

t 

Right  up  against  the  English  line  the  Irish  exiles  sprang; 
Bright  was  their  steel,   'tis  bloody  now,  their  guns  are 

filled  with  gore; 
Thro'   shattered   ranks,   and  severed   files,   and   trampled 

flags  they  tore; 


156  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

The  English  strove  with  desperate  strength,  paused,  ral- 
lied, staggered,  fled — 

The  green  hillside  is  matted  close  with  dying  and  with 
dead; 

Across  the  plain,  and  far  away  passed  on  that  hideous 
wrack, 

While  cavalier  and  fantassin  dash  in  upon  their  track. 

On  Fontenoy, — on  Fontenoy,  like  eagles  in  the  sun, 

With  bloody  plumes  the  Irish  stand — the  field  is  fought 
and  won! 

It  is  small  matter  for  wonder  that,  as  to 
Davis,  the  sword  soon  wore  out  the  scabbard. 
"I  have  taken  too  many  crops  out  of  the 
brain,"  said  Thackeray.  The  young  Irish- 
man needed  a  frame  of  iron  to  withstand  the 
wear  and  tear  of  his  passionate  thought  seek- 
ing ever,  in  Byron's  phrase,  to  wreak  itself 
upon  expression.  It  was  said  that  Shelley 
had  fancy  enough  to  portion  out  a  whole  gen- 
eration of  poets.  The  poem  which  we  have 
just  read  might  supply  them  with  motive 
energy. 

Poor  Davis!     His  short  life  was  filled  with 


THOMAS  OSBORNE  DAVIS     157 

the  joy  of  creation.  If  we  might  question 
the  eternities,  perchance  we  should  learn  that 
herein  lies  the  highest  compensation.  The 
"precious  porcelain  of  human  clay"  is  easily 
shattered;  but  the  spirit  that  could  feel  so 
ardently,  the  heart  that  throbbed  with  such 
rare  devotion,  the  soul  that  dreamed  such 
dreams  of  freedom  for  his  loved  country 
and  shrank  not  from  a  generous  martyr- 
dom— these  were  of  the  essence  of  immor- 
tality. 

The  melancholy  of  Davis — that  unfailing 
mark  of  the  Irish  poetical  temperament — was 
twin-born  with  his  poetic  soul.  Though  he 
stands  ready,  like  another  Emmet,  to  offer 
himself  as  a  sacrifice  for  his  country — though 
the  clink  of  the  sabre  is  heard  in  many  of  his 
pieces  and  the  fierce  rush  of  battle  in  "Fon- 
tenoy" — yet  that  haunting  sub-note  of  sorrow 
is  never  far  absent,  as  the  shower  too  closely 
attends  the  sunshine  of  the  soft  Irish  skies. 
While  his  countrymen  are  drinking  in  the 
fiery  songs  with  which  he  sought  to  rekindle 


158  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

the  national  spirit,  crushed  under  age-long 
oppression,  the  poet  puts  aside  the  martial 
lyre  to  tell  this  secret  of  his  heart: 

Shall  they  bury  me  in  the  deep, 
Where  wind-forgetting  waters  sleep? 
Shall  they  dig  a  grave  for  me 
Under  the  greenwood  tree, 
Or  on  the  wild  heath 
Where  the  wilder  breath 
Of  the  storm  doth  blow? 
Oh  no!— Oh  no! 

No,  on  an  Irish  green  hill-side, 
On  an  opening  lawn — but  not  too  wide; 
For  I  love  the  drip  of  the  wetted  trees — 
I  love  not  the  gales,  but  a  gentle  breeze 
To  freshen  the  turf — put  no  tombstone  there, 
But  green  sods  decked  with  daisies  fair, 
Nor  sods  too  deep;  but  so  that  the  dew 
The  matted  grass-roots  may  trickle  thro'. 
Be  my  epitaph  writ  on  my  country's  mind — 
"He  served  his  country  and  loved  his  kind." 

Davis  often  seems  a  sort  of  poetic  Sarsfield. 
He  has  the  dash  of  the  hero  cavalryman, — that 
Murat  of  the  ill-fated  wars  for  James  the  Un- 


THOMAS  OSBORNE  DAVIS      159 

worthy, — the  fierce  onslaught  of  his  attack, 
and  the  fanciful  likeness  may  be  carried  out  in 
the  touches  of  tenderness  common  to  both. 
The  martial  poet  can  plan  a  sortie,  like  the 
famous  night  ride  of  Lucan  through  the 
Kieper  mountains;  and  when  he  falls  on  the 
enemy  the  surprise  rivals  that  of  the  capture 
and  explosion  of  William's  siege-train — "Sars- 
field  is  the  word  and  Sarsfield  is  the  man!" 

It  was  fit  that  this  Anglo-Irish  poet  should 
sing  in  matchless  verse  the  glory  of  that  proud 
race  who  were  "more  Irish  than  the  Irish 
themselves";  whose  mournful  yet  inspiring 
history,  extending  over  many  ruin-marked 
centuries,  forms  part  of  the  chief  tragedy  of 
Ireland.  The  poet  was  worthy  of  his  theme, 
and  never  did  he  strike  grander  notes  than 
when  he  chanted  the  splendid  lay  of  "The 
Geraldines." 

The    Geraldines — the    Geraldines!    'tis    full    a    thousand 

years 
Since,    'mid    the   Tuscan   vineyards,   bright   flashed    their 

battle   spears ; 


160  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

When    Capet    seized    the    crown    of    France,    their    iron 

shields  were  known, 
And  their  sabre-dint  struck  terror  on   the  banks  of  the 

Garonne ; 
Across  the  downs  of  Hastings  they  spurred  by  William's 

side, 
And  the  grey  sands  of  Palestine  with  Moslem  blood  they 

dyed ; 
But  never  then,   nor  thence,   till  now,  has   falsehood  or 

disgrace 
Been  seen   to  soil   Fitzgerald's  plume,  or  mantle  in  his 

face. 

Ye  Geraldines — ye  Geraldines! — how  royally  ye  reigned 
O'er  Desmond  broad,  and  rich  Kildare,  and  English  arts 

disdained. 
Your  sword  made  knights,  your  banner  saved,  free  was 

your  bugle  call 
By  Glyn's  green  slopes,  and  Dingle's  tide,  from  Barrow's 

banks  to  Youghal. 
What  gorgeous  shrines,  what  brehon  lore,  what  minstrel 

feats  there  were 
In  and   around   Maynooth's  grey  keep,   and  palace-filled 

Adare! 
But  not  for  rite  or  feast  ye  stayed,  when  friend  or  kin 

were  press'd ; 


THOMAS  OSBORNE  DAVIS      161 

And  foeman  fled,  when  "Crom  abo"  bespoke  your  lance 
in  rest. 

True    Geraldine!    brave    Geraldine! — as   torrents    mould 

the  earth, 
You    channelled    deep   old    Ireland's   heart   by   constancy 

and  worth ; 
When    Ginckle    'leaguered    Limerick,    the    Irish   soldiers 

gazed 
To   see   if   in    the   setting  sun    dead    Desmond's   banner 

blazed! 

And  still  it  is  the  peasant's  hope  upon  the  Curragh's  mere, 

"They  live,  who'll  see  ten  thousand  men  with  good  Lord 
Edward  here" — 

So  let  them  dream  till  brighter  days,  when,  not  by  Ed- 
ward's shade, 

But  by  some  leader  true  as  he,  their  lines  shall  be  arrayed ! 

Davis  has  tenderness  as  well  as  strength, 
else  he  could  not  be  the  truly  Irish  poet  he  is. 
It  is  indeed  a  tragic  pathos  that  overflows  in 
the  "Lament  on  the  Death  of  Owen  Roe,"  the 
simplest  yet  most  passionate  elegy  in  the  lan- 
guage. 


1 62  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

I  am  tempted  to  revert  to  history  for  a  mo- 
ment, to  that  black  page  seared  with  the  curse 
of  Cromwell.  The  man  who  was  a  liberator 
as  well  as  a  regicide  in  England,  played  the 
triple  part  of  butcher,  bigot  and  enslaver  in 
Ireland.  Mark  his  words:  "I  meddle  with 
no  man's  conscience.  But  if  by  liberty  of 
conscience  you  mean  liberty  to  exercise  the 
Mass,  I  judge  it  best  to  use  plain  dealing  with 
you,  and  to  let  you  know  where  the  Parlia- 
ment of  England  has  power,  that  will  not  be 
allowed." 

And  Oliver  was  better  than  his  word. 
When  he  took  Drogheda  he  ordered  nearly 
the  entire  garrison  hacked  to  pieces  in  cold 
blood,  together  with  all  the  friars  in  the  town. 
But  that  was  hardly  enough  to  warrant  him 
in  piously  returning  thanks  to  God,  accord- 
ing to  his  wont.  There  was  also  a  wholesale 
butchery  of  the  women  and  children,  and, 
without  claiming  specific  credit  for  this,  "it 
is  good,"  as  Cromwell  modestly  observed, 
"that  God  above  have  all  the  glory."     Wex- 


THOMAS  OSBORNE  DAVIS      163 

ford  was  served  in  like  fashion — "a  mar- 
vellous great  mercy,"  he  called  it — no  quarter 
being  given  and  nearly  three  thousand  sol- 
diers and  citizens  slaughtered  like  sheep. 

These  items  may  persuade  us  that  the 
doomed  Irish  people  had  good  and  sufficient 
cause  to  mourn  the  loss  of  Owen  Roe  O'Neil, 
the  only  man  in  their  army  at  all  capable  of 
opposing  the  iron  puritan  in  the  field. 

Long  as  the  heroic  O'Neil  has  been  sleep- 
ing, it  will  be  longer  yet  ere  such  lines  as 
these  shall  lose  their  power  to  move  the  Irish 
heart. 

Wail — wail   ye   for   the   Mighty   One!     Wail — wail   ye 

for  the  Dead! 
Quench    the    hearth,    and    hold    the   breath — with    ashes 

strew  the  head! 
How  tenderly  we  loved  him!     How  deeply  we  deplore! 
Holy  Saviour!  but  to  think  we  shall  never  see  him  more. 

Sagest  in  the  council  was  he, — kindest  in  the  hall, 
Sure  we  never  won  a  battle — 'twas  Owen  won  them  all. 
Had  he  lived — had  he  lived,  our  dear  country  had  been 
free ; 


1 64  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

But  he's  dead — but  he's  dead,  and  'tis  slaves  we'll  ever  be! 

Wail — wail  him  thro'  the  Island !     Weep — weep  for  our 

pride! 
Would  that  on  the  battle-field  our  gallant  Chief  had  died ! 
Weep  the  Victor  of  Benburb — weep  him,  young  men  and 

old; 
Weep  for  him,  ye  women — your  beautiful  lies  cold. 

We  thought  you  would  not  die — we  were  sure  you  could 

not  go, 
And   leave   us  in   our  utmost  need   to  Cromwell's  cruel 

blow : 
Sheep  without  a  shepherd,  when  the  snow  shuts  out  the 

sky — 
O!  why  did  you  leave  us,  Owen?     Why  did  you  die? 

Soft  as  a  woman's  was  your  voice,  O'Neil ! — bright  was 

your  eye: 
O,  why  did  you  leave  us,  Owen?  why  did  you  die? 
Your  troubles  are  all  over,  you're  at  rest  with  God  on 

high, 
But  we're  slaves  and  we're  orphans,  Owen — why  did  you 

die? 

In  the  columns  of  the  Nation,  that  bril- 
liant and  daring  organ  of  the  New-Ireland- 
ers,  poetry  like  "Fontenoy"  and  "The  Gerald- 


THOMAS  OSBORNE  DAVIS     165 

ines"  was  rightly  held  to  make  proselytes  to 
the  cause  of  revolution;  but  little  dalliance 
with  the  softer  muses  might  be  encouraged — 
as  diverting  attention  from  the  stern  business 
in  hand.  However,  God  in  His  wisdom  has 
rarely  made  an  Irishman — not  to  say,  an  Irish 
poet — without  the  capacity  of  loving;  and  so 
Davis  has  at  least  one  love  song  which  may 
well  persuade  us  that  his  poet  nature  was 
complete.  Humble  though  it  be  and  born  of 
the  refrain  of  many  a  simple  ballad,  it  has  yet 
the  pure  pearl  of  sentiment,  the  fine  gold  of 
sterling  poetry. 

Come  in  the  evening,  or  come  in  the  morning, 
Come  when  you're  looked  for,  or  come  without  warning ; 
Kisses  and  welcome  you'll  find  here  before  you, 
And  the  oftener  you  come  here  the  more  I'll  adore  you. 
Light  is  my  heart  since  the  day  we  were  plighted, 
Red  is  my  cheek  that  they  told  me  was  blighted ; 
The  green  of  the  trees  looks  far  greener  than  ever, 
And  the  linnets  are  singing,  "True  lovers,  don't  sever!" 

I'll  pull  you  sweet  flowers,  to  wear  if  you  choose  them; 
Or,  after  you've  kissed  them,  they'll  lie  on  my  bosom. 
I'll  fetch  from  the  mountain  its  breeze  to  inspire  you; 


1 66  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

I'll  fetch  from  my  fancy  a  tale  that  won't  tire  you. 

O,    your    step's    like    the    rain    to    the    summer-vexed 

farmer, 
Or  sabre  and  shield  to  a  knight  without  armor; 
I'll  sing  you  sweet  songs  till  the  stars  rise  above  me, 
Then,  wandering,  I'll  wish  you,  in  silence,  to  love  me. 
So  come  in  the  evening,  etc. 

Something  in  the  Irish  character — some- 
thing of  the  genius  of  the  race — seems  to  have 
died  with  the  brilliant  fiasco  of  New  Ireland. 
There  have  been  patriots  since,  but  few  of  the 
fellowship  of  Mitchel.  As  for  the  poets  of 
'Forty-eight,  we  shall  not  look  upon  their  like 
again.  A  certain  impatience  of  Irish  poetry, 
patriotism,  sentiment,  is  manifest  after  that 
period,  as  if  the  world  resented  having  had 
its  sympathies  too  warmly  engaged,  to  no  pur- 
pose, and  was  bound  it  should  not  be  so  taken 
in  again.  For  the  world,  like  the  individual, 
is  selfish,  and  does  not  care  to  spend  its  grace 
with  no  prospect  of  return. 

The  revolutionary  spirit  which  animated 
those  "high  sons  of  the  lyre"  has  long  since 
died  out  (the  Fenian  fever  of  a  later  day  was 


THOMAS  OSBORNE  DAVIS     167 

hardly  a  heroic  symptom),  and  although  one 
may  not  safely  predicate  either  of  Irish  pa- 
triotism or  Irish  temperament,  it  is  improb- 
able that  we  of  this  generation  shall  live  to 
see  a  flame  rekindled  from  its  ashes.  The 
paltering  ways  of  parliamentary  reform,  the 
doctrine  of  mortal  suasion,  the  "paradise  of 
cold  hearts" — to  apply  a  phrase  from  Ma- 
caulay — will  not  give  us  another  Davis,  an- 
other Mangan. 

Now  and  then,  mayhap,  a  fierce  note  shall 
be  struck  out  of  the  sullen  apathy  of  the  peo- 
ple, recalling  that  splendid  burst  of  poetry, 
that  rapture  of  patriotism,  which  marked  the 
magic  era  of  'Forty-eight.  But  the  lover  of 
"Dark  Rosaleen"  shall  lie  quiet  in  his  obscure 
grave;  the  elegist  of  O'Neil  shall  not  waken 
from  his  dreamless  sleep.  If  consciousness 
shall  ever  come  to  these,  under  the  weeping 
dews,  the  caressing  shamrocks,  it  must  be  in 
that  day  for  which  the  children  of  Erin  cease 
not  to  cry,  like  the  Psalmist;  and  in  which 
their  faith  is  as  enduring  as  the  mercy  of  their 
God. 


GERALD  GRIFFIN 

THE  love  of  poetry  is  given  unto  most  of 
the  children  of  men,  but  the  literary  con- 
cept of  the  thing  is  too  often  a  pain  and  a 
weariness.  The  critics  and  the  professors  of 
poetry  are  evermore  bandying  their  apple  of 
discord.  The  great  public, — as  the  newspa- 
pers phrase  it, — the  vulgar  many,  if  you  will, 
are  not  seldom  a  unit  and  cast  a  single  suffrage. 
The  many  are  in  the  wrong,  of  course,  but  I  am 
not  always  sure  of  it.  After  much  critical 
reading,  one  recurs  with  a  refreshing  sense  to 
those  sources  of  pleasure  about  which  even 
the  critics  are  agreed  that  it  is  not  worth 
while  to  dispute.  The  mental  ache  is  gone; 
the  tension  of  thought  which  latter-day 
poetry  induces  is  instantly  relieved.  There  is 
hardly  any  artifice  in  these  rhymes;  an  occa- 

168 


GERALD  GRIFFIN  169 

sional  false  quantity  does  not  displease  us;  the 
poet  cannot  tell  his  tale  simply  enough  and  his 
words  are  the  gold  of  common  speech — we  are 
very  far  from  the  Browningesque  conviction 
that  to  be  great  is  to  be  turgid  and  obscure. 
Here  is  passion  enough,  but  of  a  natural  sort, 
without  a  damnable  complexity  of  motive  and 
refinements  that  are  super-sexual.  Here  is 
patriotism  that  shames  the  diluted  article  of 
our  day.  Here  is  love  that  does  not  lack  the 
essentials  of  human  interest  because  it  is  pure 
and  Innocence  may  hold  the  page,  unharmed 
of  any  lurking  satyr. 

It  is  told  of  Handel  that  he  once  said  he 
would  rather  have  composed  the  tender  mel- 
ody of  "Eileen  Aroon"  than  all  the  elaborate 
works  of  his  genius.  Simplicity,  the  first 
note  in  nature,  is  the  last  result  in  art.  After 
a  strong  course  of  the  reigning  Muscovite  or 
Slavic  fiction,  even  after  the  more  delicate 
and  artistic  pruriencies  of  the  French  realists, 
we  think  better  of  Doctor  Primrose,  take 
down  the  little  volume  reverently  and  follow 


170  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

with  a  chastened  heart  the  simple  fortunes  of 
the  good  vicar.  And  against  the  judgment 
of  the  critics  who  have  in  our  day  discounted 
Dickens,  who  have  told  us  that  one  generation 
is  enough  to  weep  over  Tiny  Tim  and  Little 
Nell — against  this  chilling  decree  may  be  set 
the  fact — reassuring  to  some  of  us  who  have 
felt  the  spell  of  the  wizard — that  "David  Cop- 
perfield"  is  still  the  high  water  mark  by  which 
we  measure  the  popular  sense  of  the  good, 
the  true  and  the  beautiful  in  fiction. 

In  a  lately  published  volume  of  Irish  songs, 
compiled  by  Mr.  Charles  MacCarthy  Col- 
lins, M.R.I.A.,  the  editor  makes  it  a  subject 
of  lament  that  Irish  poetry  offers  "no  epics 
with  a  trace  of  the  fire  of  Homer,  of  the 
grandeur  of  Dante,  of  the  majesty  of  Milton; 
no  descriptive  poems  like  'Childe  Harold,'  no 
satires  like  the  'Dunciad.'  "  Truly,  I  do  not 
think  the  Irish  are  greatly  to  be  pitied  for 
their  lack  of  epics.  Ancient  Irish  nomencla- 
ture, to  say  the  least,  raises  such  difficulties 
that  the  reading  of  them  might  perforce  be  left 


GERALD  GRIFFIN  171 

to  the  antiquarians.  Even  the  exquisite  art  of 
Tennyson  does  not  save  the  Arthurian  legends 
from  palling.  Merlin,  Lancelot,  Guinevere 
and  the  rest  "come  like  shadows,  so  depart," 
with  no  relation  to  the  living  world.  If  this 
be  poetry — and  it  would  be  daring  to  doubt — 
we  are  perhaps  unfit  for  the  message.  Our 
ears  have  not  been  touched  that  we  may  hear, 
our  eyes  that  we  may  see.  Too  easily  the  fairy 
gift  escapes  our  gross  perception,  nor  may  we 
follow  it  with  the  chastened  vision  of  Sir  Gal- 
ahad, as  he  traces  the  mystic  flight  of  the 
Holy  Grail.  Only  we  know,  despairing  of 
the  beauty  and  the  mystery,  that  it  is  lost  to 
us — 

Adown  dark  tides  of  glory  slides 
And  star-like  mingles  with  the  stars! 

The  world  is,  indeed,  greatly  blessed  with 
epics  which  it  seldom  takes  down  from  the 
upper  shelf.  But  this  is,  in  a  sense,  to  apply 
the  yard-measure  to  poetry.  A  single  line 
becomes  unforgettable.  A  book  sinks  into 
oblivion.     We    have    broken    with    the    old 


172  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

gods,  who  were,  perhaps,  no  great  gods  after 
all.  There  shall  be  no  more  epics.  For  it  is 
now  an  article  of  perfect  faith  that  a  man 
shall  fittingly  waste  his  whole  life,  heart,  pas- 
sion, the  very  inmost  flame  of  him,  for  some 
dozen  lines  of  real  poetry. 

The  best  of  Irish  songs  are  peerless  in  the 
respects  of  natural  sentiment,  tenderness, 
pathos  and  delicacy — and  what  else  is  there 
to  put  into  a  song?  I  do  not  limit  this  ob- 
servation to  the  Irish  Melodies  of  Thomas 
Moore,  who  stands  by  himself  and  whose 
songs,  in  their  union  of  music  and  poetry,  are 
in  my  view  beyond  comparison,  either  with 
those  of  any  other  nation  or  even  with  the 
happiest  efforts  of  his  gifted  countrymen. 
Some  of  these  latter  seem  at  times  to  excel  him 
in  point  of  vigour  and  natural  freedom,  but 
not  one  of  the  few  who  are  often  ignorantly 
cited  as  his  peers,  is  able  to  maintain,  as  he 
always  is,  the  high  level  of  the  classic.  If 
Moore  have  a  fault,  it  is,  perhaps,  that  he 
refines  too  much.     The  diamond  of  his  Irish 


GERALD  GRIFFIN  173 

song  is  the  brightest  in  the  world,  but  it  is  also 
the  most  artfully  polished.  Granting  him  all 
he  deserves,  the  poetic  genius  of  his  race  is  yet 
fully  exemplified  by  turning  to  all  that  is  not 
his,  and  finding  so  much  of  the  rarest  value, 
"which  mankind  will  not  willingly  let  die." 

There  is  no  name  in  the  literature  of  the 
last  century  dearer  to  Irishmen  than  that  of 
Gerald  Griffin.  He  lived  fewer  years  than 
Mangan,  and  his,  too,  was  an  ill-starred 
genius.  If  misfortune  be  the  true  badge 
of  the  poet,  either  of  these  brilliant  men 
may  pass  unchallenged  on  that  score. 
Like  Mangan,  the  author  of  "The  Collegians" 
had  to  contend  with  poverty,  and  he  did  his 
share  of  starving  in  London,  whither  he  had 
gone  from  Limerick  at  the  age  of  eighteen  to 
begin  a  literary  career. 

But  the  moral  fibre  of  Griffin  was  of 
sterner  stufY  than  that  of  the  erratic  Barme- 
cide. With  a  nature  deeply,  even  morbidly 
religious,  he  was  proof  against  those  Bohc- 


174  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

mian  temptations  which  attend  failure  even 
more  than  success.  He  took  his  short  com- 
mons patiently  enough,  and  between  intervals 
of  hack-work  for  the  newspapers,  managed  to 
write  a  tragedy  in  the  regulation  classic 
mould,  which  convinces  us  that  he  was  not 
likely  to  carry  out  his  threat  of  "throwing 
Shakespeare  in  the  shade." 

Quitting  London  in  despair  after  a  few 
years,  Griffin  returned  to  his  native  Limerick. 
Who  can  forget  the  lines  in  which  his  sorely 
tried  heart,  his  wounded  spirit,  too  proud  and 
tender  for  the  sordid  struggle,  spoke  his  love 
and  thankfulness  at  seeing  old  Ireland  again 
after  his  weary  travail  in  an  alien  world? 

'Tis,  it  is  the  Shannon's  stream, 

Brightly  glancing,  brightly  glancing, 

See,  O  see  the  ruddy  beam 
Upon  its  waters  dancing. 

Thus  returned  from  travel  vain, 

Years  of  exile,  years  of  pain, 
To  see  old  Shannon's  face  again, — 

O,  the  bliss  entrancing! 


GERALD  GRIFFIN  175 

Hail,  our  own  majestic  stream, 

Flowing  ever,  flowing  ever; 
Silent  in  the  morning  beam, 

Our  own  beloved  river! 

Here  amid  the  scenes  of  his  youth  he  drew 
the  inspiration  which  has  made  his  name  im- 
mortal. The  "Hallowtide  Tales"  and  the 
''Tales  of  the  Munster  Festivals,"  appearing 
in  quick  succession,  were  an  earnest  that  the 
young  Irishman  was  capable  of  great  things  in 
prose  fiction,  if  not  in  classic  tragedy.  And  in 
1828  when,  on  the  occasion  of  his  second  and 
last  visit  to  the  metropolis  of  Gog  and  Magog, 
the  famous  novel  of  "The  Collegians"  was 
given  to  the  world,  Griffin  at  once  sprang  into 
a  brilliant  reputation,  which  the  lapse  of 
nearly  a  century  has  but  widened  and  con- 
firmed. 

Boucicaulfs  stage  version,  "The  Colleen 
Bawn,"  has  helped  to  make  this  novel  one  of 
the  best  known  in  the  range  of  English  fic- 
tion. It  was  a  remarkable  performance  for 
a  young  man  under  twenty-five,  and  it  con- 


i/6  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

tains  the  promise,  annulled  by  Griffin's  retire- 
ment from  the  world  and  untimely  death, 
that  the  author  would  write  his  name  with  the 
masters  of  the  English  novel.  The  great  and 
kindly  Sir  Walter  Scott  had  an  approving 
eye  on  the  young  Irishman.  Scattered 
through  the  volumes  of  his  Diary,  we  find 
references  to  Griffin  and  his  work,  always 
couched  in  terms  of  high  appreciation. 

It  is,  of  course,  impossible  to  say  what 
Griffin  might  have  done  had  he  lived  to  fulfil 
the  earnest  of  his  first  success.  Excepting 
Scott's,  none  of  the  great  novels  of  the  century 
had  been  written  when  the  "Tale  of  Garry- 
owen"  saw  the  light.  Dickens  was  to  come. 
More  than  a  decade  was  to  pass  before 
Thackeray  should  challenge  his  "pride  o' 
place."  Mary  Ann  Evans,  better  known  as 
George  Eliot,  was  still  in  pinafores.  In  fact, 
the  splendid  cycle  of  Victorian  fiction  had  not 
begun  to  unfold.  That  is  almost  to  say,  the 
Art  of  Fiction,  as  now  understood,  had  not 
been  formulated.     Sometimes  the  man  seems 


GERALD  GRIFFIN  177 

to  make  the  epoch  and  then  again  the  epoch 
seems  to  make  the  man.  Mr.  Howells  has 
told  us,  with  unconscious  humour,  perhaps, 
how  much  he  is  the  gainer  by  coming  after 
Dickens  and  Thackeray.  Be  it  remembered 
that  Griffin  went  before  either  of  those  giants 
of  the  Victorian  age;  and,  therefore,  on  the 
score  of  literary  obligation  a  balance  is  to  be 
struck  in  his  favour. 

In  the  first  dayspring  of  his  rich  fancy 
teeming  with  the  legend,  the  lore  and  the  ro- 
mance of  his  native  Mononia,  our  poet  might 
well  have  said,  "Time  and  I  against  any  other 
two" — evermore  the  challenge  of  genius  con- 
fident to  art  inexorable.  Oh,  that  tale  of 
Garryowen!  how  the  truth  and  the  pathos  of 
it  grip  the  heart  of  one  who,  like  myself, 
must  make  the  response  that  nature  demands 
and  prove  the  deep  kinship  of  race  by  an  au- 
thentic sympathy!  In  a  day  when  we  scan 
the  newest  author's  style  for  evidence  of  de- 
generacy, and  even  dramatize  the  gruesome 
findings  of  pathology,  what  a  delight  to  turn  to 


178  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

that  incomparable  chapter  which  rehearses 
the  rise  and  fall  of  Owen's  Garden!  To  me 
there  seems  a  pathos  truly  epical,  not  un- 
mingled  with  a  rich  suggestion  of  Irish  hu- 
mour, in  the  immortal  stanza  that  epitomises 
the  story  of  how  Garryowen  rose  and  how 
Garryowen  fell: 

'Tis  there  we'll  drink  the  nutbrown  ale, 
We'll  pay  the  reckoning  on  the  nail, 
No  man  for  debt  shall  go  to  jail 
In  Garryowen  na-gloria! 

With  some  of  the  faults  of  a  young  man's 
book,  "The  Collegians"  is  a  story  of  the  highest 
power.  No  other  Irish  writer  has  drawn  the 
Irish  peasant  with  anything  like  the  fidelity 
of  Griffin. 

There  are  many  passages  in  "The  Col- 
legians" and  in  "Tracy's  Ambition"  which  you 
will  hardly  better  with  the  best  in  Thack- 
eray and  Dickens.  Has  the  biographer  of 
Barry  Lyndon  given  us  anything  truer  to  the 
life  than  the  sketch  of  "Fireball"   Creagh? 


GERALD  GRIFFIN  179 

Has  he  a  scene  in  which  the  tragic  and  the 
grotesque  are  more  strongly  mingled  than  in 
the  death  of  poor  Dalton?  And  is  not  Dick- 
ens matched  on  his  own  chosen  ground  of 
dramatic,  highly  wrought  circumstance  by 
the  powerful  episode  of  the  finding  of  Eily 
O'Connor's  corpse,  or  the  accusation  of  the 
guilty  lover  by  Danny  Mann,  or  the  remorse, 
grief  and  shame  of  the  "little  Lord"  when  he 
hears  the  accusing  ballad  from  behind  his 
prison  door: 

As  for  that  false  and  cruel  knave 

Who  stole  my  life  away, 
I  leave  h!m  to  the  Judge  of  Heaven 

And  to  the  Judgment  Day. 

The  truth  of  Griffin's  pictures  of  Irish 
peasant  life  is  not  their  only  artistic  merit. 
He  had  the  genuine  creative  gift,  that  inform- 
ing faculty  which  goes  before  everything 
else  in  the  equipment  of  the  novelist.  With 
what  truth  of  nature  he  discriminates  a  score 
of  Irish  peasants!     The  dialect  may  be  un- 


180  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

varied  for  all,  but  in  each  case  the  expression 
of  character  is  defined  with  the  valid  touch  of 
the  artist.  Loyal  as  I  am  to  Dickens,  I  shall 
not  give  you  Lowry  Looby  for  Sam  Weller: 
the  one  is  flesh  and  blood;  the  other,  accord- 
ing to  Mr.  Saintsbury,  is  "extra-human!" 

But  I  am  to  speak  of  Gerald  Griffin  as  a 
poet  rather  than  as  a  novelist,  although  some 
of  the  best  of  his  poetry  is  to  be  found  in  his 
prose — which  indeed  has  led  me  to  say  so 
much  of  the  latter.  He  has  little  of  the 
bardic  spirit  which  animates  Mangan.  No 
line  of  his  recalls  the  ancient  sennachie.  But 
he  excels  the  author  of  "Dark  Rosaleen"  in  ten- 
derness even  as  the  latter  surpasses  him  in 
strength.  He  has  given  us  two  or  three  of 
the  very  finest  in  the  whole  compass  of  Irish 
love  songs.  And,  as  an  Irishman,  I  may  be 
pardoned  for  believing  that  "My  Mary  of  the 
Curling  Hair"  is  one  of  the  sweetest  love 
songs  in  the  world. 

My  Mary  of  the  curling  hair, 

The  laughing  teeth  and  bashful  air, 


GERALD  GRIFFIN  181 

Our  bridal  morn  is  dawning  fair, 
With  blushes  in  the  skies. 

Shule,  shule,  shule,  agra! 

My  love!  my  pearl! 

My  own  dear  girl ! 
My  mountain  maid,  arise! 

Wake,  linnet  of  the  osier  grove! 
Wake,  trembling,  stainless,  virgin  dove! 
Wake,  nestling  of  a  parent's  love! 
Let  Moran  see  thine  eyes. 

I  am  no  stranger  proud  and  gay, 
To  win  thee  from  thy  home  away, 
And  find  thee,  for  a  distant  day, 
A  theme  for  wasting  sighs. 

But  we  were  known  from  infancy, 
Thy  father's  hearth  was  home  to  me, 
No  selfish  love  was  mine  for  thee, 
Unholy  and  unwise. 

And  yet  (to  see  what  love  can  do) 
Though  calm  my  hope  has  burned  and  true, 
My  cheek  is  pale  and  worn  for  you, 
And  sunken  are  mine  eyes! 


182  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

But  soon  my  love  shall  be  my  bride, 
And,  happy  by  our  own  fireside, 
My  veins  shall  feel  the  rosy  tide 
That  lingering  hope  denies. 

My  Mary  of  the  curling  hair, 
The  laughing  teeth  and  bashful  air, 
Our  bridal  morn  is  dawning  fair, 
With  blushes  in  the  sky. 

Shule,  shule!  shule,  agra!  etc. 

Purity,  no  less  than  tenderness,  marks  the 
love  songs  of  Gerald  Griffin,  and  indeed  both 
these  qualities  are  characteristic  of  most  Irish 
poetry  of  the  affections.  A  chivalrous  re- 
spect for  womanhood  and  a  certain  delicacy 
of  feeling  in  the  warmest  utterance  of  passion, 
are  proper  to  the  poets  of  a  people  who  have 
in  all  times  been  distinguished  by  a  genuine 
morality.  The  statisticians  are  here  com- 
pelled to  agree  with  the  eulogists  of  the  Irish 
character.  And  although  virtue  in  the 
amatory  relation  has  been  sufficiently  dis- 
counted by  the  practice  of  some  poets  greater 


GERALD  GRIFFIN  183 

than  Gerald  Griffin,  we  are  not  the  less 
beholden  to  the  chaste  muse  of  the  Irish 
singer. 

A  common  fatalism  no  less  than  a  common 
genius  marks  this  group  of  Irish  poets. 
"Whom  the  gods  love  die  young" — the  ten- 
derest  truth  caught  from  the  antique  world 
— tells  the  destiny  of  Griffin  and  Davis. 
Mangan,  too,  passed  untimely — shattered, 
broken,  aged,  by  the  torments  of  a  wrecked 
spirit.  All  had  eaten  "that  bread  which  is 
the  bitterest  of  all  food";  all  had  climbed 
those  "stairs  which  are  the  hardest  to  climb"; 
all  had  tasted  that  "deferred  hope  which 
maketh  the  heart  sick."  None  attained  to 
more  than  a  half  measure  of  years.  Griffin, 
Davis  and  one  more  of  whom  I  am  to  speak, 
were  possessed  with  the  boding  of  early 
death.  I  have  already  marked  the  morbid 
piety  of  Griffin,  linked  as  it  was  with  a 
presage  of  untimely  decay,  a  feeling  which 
had  haunted  him  from  boyhood,  as  he  tells 
us  in  those  simple  and  affecting  verses: 


1 84  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

In  the  time  of  my  boyhood  I  had  a  strange  feeling 
That  I  was  to  die  in  the  noon  of  my  day, 

Not  quietly  into  the  silent  grave  stealing, 
But  torn,  like  a  blasted  oak,  sudden  away. 

That  even  in  the  hour  when  enjoyment  was  keenest, 
My  lamp  should  quench  suddenly,  hissing  in  gloom; 

That  even  when  mine  honours  were  freshest  and  greenest, 
A  blight  should  rush  over  and  scatter  their  bloom. 

But  be  it  a  dream  or  a  mystic  revealing, 

The  bodement  has  haunted  me  year  after  year, 

And  whenever  my  bosom  with  rapture  was  filling, 
I  paused  for  the  football  of  fate  at  mine  ear. 

With  this  feeling  upon  me,  all  feverish  and  glowing, 
I  rushed  up  the  rugged  way  pointing  to  fame; 

I  snatched  at  my  laurels  while  yet  they  were  growing, 
And  won  for  my  guerdon  the  half  of  a  name! 

Doubtless  the  poet's  gloomy  presentiment 
offers  nothing  of  deeper  psychologic  import 
than  the  native  sadness  of  the  true  Irish  tem- 
perament, shadowed  by  an  intense  poetic  sen- 
sibility. But  however  we  may  speculate 
about  it,  we  know  that  it  drove  Griffin  from 


GERALD  GRIFFIN  185 

his  literary  successes  into  an  Irish  monastery, 
where  he  turned,  like  Chatterton  in  the  play, 
upon  his  precious  manuscripts,  and  destroyed 
them  that  his  soul  might  have  peace.  Byron 
standing  beside 

"the  grave  of  him  who  blazed 
The  comet  of  a  season," 

teaches  not  the  vanity  of  literary  ambition 
more  impressively  than  the  single  slab  which 
bears  the  name  of  Brother  Gerald  Griffin. 


CALLANAN, 

THE  BARD  OF  GOUGAUNE  BARRA 

TN  beginning  these  papers  I  observed  that 
■*■  my  task  should  be  to  bring  to  your  notice 
much  with  which  the  critic  has  no  concern. 
Therefore,  I  shall  make  no  apology  for  intro- 
ducing into  this  group  of  Irish  poets  one  so 
little  known  to  the  world  of  letters  as  the  poet 
above  named.  We  are,  I  trust,  better  in- 
formed in  our  judgment  and  sympathy. 
Poor  Callanan  of  "Gougaune  Barra," — which 
remains  one  of  the  most  memorable  of  Irish 
poems, — was  in  truth  a  humble  singer,  yet 
not  unworthy  of  the  comradeship  in  which  I 
have  ventured  to  place  him.  No  poet  has  re- 
ported the  characteristics  of  Irish  scenery,  the 
heartbeats  of  Irish  patriotism,  with  a  more 
instructed  vision  for  the  one,  or  a  more  pas- 
sionate feeling  for  the  other.  Earth  hues 
and  sky  tints  float  in  his  verse  as  if  reflected 

186 


C  ALLAN  AN  187 

by  the  crystal  wave  of  the  Shannon  or  Suir. 
His  were  the  eyes  that  saw,  his  were  the  ears 
that  heard  ;  and  however  slight  the  body  of  his 
work,  it  entitles  him  to  a  proud  place  and 
enduring  fame  in  the  Irish  anthology. 

Like  Griffin,  this  poet  is  virginal  in  pas- 
sion ;  a  devout  dreamer,  a  tender  ascetic.  And 
as  did  the  mythical  Kevin,  he  will  flee  from 
the  blue  eyes  of  Kathleen,  "eyes  of  most  un- 
holy blue."  Nay,  if  she  pursue  him  too  far, 
seeking  to  tempt  his  sacred  vows,  let  her  be- 
ware the  anger  of  the  mystic  solitary,  guard- 
ing his  treasure  of  holiness  with  a  fearful  care. 
Let  her  think  on  Glendalough  and  its  gloomy 
wave ! 

The  poetry  of  Callanan  and  Griffin  calls 
up  many  a  haunting  vision  of  Innisfail,  the 
Sacred  Isle.  This  is  one  I  often  see  at  the 
bidding  of  the  gentle  poet:  It  is  a  green 
land,  of  a  greenness  unmatched  elsewhere, 
and  over  it  the  peace  of  the  Sabbath  is  brood- 
ing. Yonder  is  a  grey  ruin,  its  garniture  of 
ivy    and    climbing    wild-flowers    hiding    old 


188  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

wounds  that  mutely  tell  some  glorious  story 
of  the  long  ago — perchance  of  blood  that  was 
shed  in  vain,  of  heroes  who  sleep  unnamed, 
forgotten.  See,  there  is  a  modest  church, 
with  its  low  spire  and  simple  black  cross,  that 
most  speaking  emblem  of  human  faith,  cher- 
ished by  this  people  as  I  believe  by  no  other. 
A  bell  is  slowly  ringing  to  Mass,  and  there  is 
a  whisper  at  my  heart  that  if  I  wait  and  watch 
with  faith  like  unto  theirs,  mayhap  I  shall  see 
among  those  quiet  faces  one  whom  I  too  early 
lost  and  whose  anxious  love  shines  upon  me 
from  the  mists  of  childhood. 

Ah,  me!  The  Irish  Muse  was  indeed  a 
saint,  and  the  poet  offered  at  her  shrine  the 
homage  of  his  purity  and  flawless  faith. 
These  minstrels  often  sang  of  love  and 
touched  the  higher  chords,  but  of  that  earthly 
love  which  is  fiercer  than  fire,  yea,  which  is 
sometimes  more  bitter  than  death,  they  knew 
nothing.  I  believe  this  acrid  human  passion 
too  is  needful,  and  greater  poets  than  they 
have  enforced  the  tragic  truth.     Yet  the  rare 


CALLANAN  189 

purity  of  these  elect  singers  touches  with  in- 
finite pathos.  It  is  of  a  like  strain  with  the 
sadness  of  their  lives,  their  idealised  patriot- 
ism, their  untimely  decline. 

It  is  distinction  enough  for  poor  Callanan, 
if  no  more  might  be  claimed  for  him,  that  he 
has  given  us  "Gougaune  Barra,"  which  has  a 
charm  for  me  that  I  cannot  hope  to  convey  to 
my  readers.  Born  in  the  land  whose  living 
breast  nurtured  the  poets  we  have  been  study- 
ing, I  was  so  early  removed  as  to  be  unable 
to  retain  any  impressions  save  those  which  are 
stamped  on  the  memory  of  childhood.  The 
effort  to  combine  these  images  into  a  picture 
intelligible  to  my  mature  sense — to  find  the 
magic  sesame  to  that  enchanted  period — has, 
I  confess,  often  occupied  me,  since  the  natural 
interest  in  one's  birthright  may  plead  for  such 
a  vanity.  I  have  had  only  partial  success  in 
this  attempt  to  recreate  a  child's  paradise, — 
for  the  poorest  environment  may  be  that — and 
have  therefore  had  recourse  to  Irish  poetry  of 
the  familiar  sort,   in  quest  of  some  clue  to 


i9o  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

these  broken  memories.  This  was,  of  course, 
to  part  with  my  earliest  faith,  since  no  poetry, 
the  work  of  ripened  minds,  can  hope  to  bear 
the  least  resemblance  to  that  divine  quality 
which  makes  the  vision  of  the  child.  After 
one  has  ceased  to  believe  in  the  gold  at  the 
foot  of  the  rainbow,  there  is  an  end  to  one's 
first  poetry. 

For  some  reason  growing  vaguely  out  of 
these  early  and  disjointed  associations,  I  have 
always  been  especially  fond  of  some  pieces  of 
Callanan's.  Nor  (I  should  hope)  am  I  to  be 
suspected  of  an  undue  preference  on  the 
ground  that  the  poet  was  himself  a  native  of 
the  noble  county  of  Cork.  My  Irish  citizen- 
ship is  scarcely  vivid  enough  for  that.  Yet, 
as  I  would  say,  Callanan  has  done  much  in 
helping  me  to  realise  the  birthright  of  ro- 
mance to  which  I  fell  heir  unwittingly,  and 
of  which  an  untoward  fate  has  suffered  me  to 
make  nothing;  and  so  "Gougaune  Barra"  em- 
bodies for  me  the  wildness  and  sweetness  of 
the  Irish  poetical  inspiration. 


CALLANAN  191 

There  is  a  green  island  in  lone  Gougaune  Barra 
Whence  Allua  of  songs  rushes  forth  like  an  arrow; 
In  deep- valley ed  Desmond  a  thousand  wild  fountains 
Come  down  to  that  lake  from  their  home  in  the  moun- 
tains. 
There  grows  the  wild  ash ;  and  a  time-stricken  willow 
Looks  chidingly  down  on  the  mirth  of  the  billow, 
As  like  some  gay  child  that  sad  monitor  scorning, 
It  lightly  laughs  back  to  the  laugh  of  the  morning. 

And  its  zone  of  dark  hills — O!  to  see  them  all  bright- 

'ning, 
When  the  tempest  flings  out  its  red  banner  of  lightning, 
And  the  waters  come  down,  'mid  the  thunder's  deep  rat- 
tle, 
Like  clans  from  their  hill  at  the  voice  of  the  battle; 
And  biightly  the  fire-crested  billows  are  gleaming, 
And  wildly  from  Mallow  the  eagles  are  screaming; — 
( ),  where  is  the  dwelling,  in  valley  or  highland, 
So  meet  for  a  bard  as  this  lone  little  island ! 

High  sons  of  the  lyre!     O,  how  proud  was  the  feeling 
To  dream  while  alone  through  that  solitude  stealing; 
Though  loftier  minstrels  green  Erin  can  number, 
I  alone  waked  the  strain  of  her  harp  from  its  slumber, 
And  glean'd  the  grey  legend  that  long  had  been  sleeping, 
Where  oblivion's  dull  mist  o'er  its  beauty  was  creeping, 


192  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

From  the  love  which  I  felt  for  my  country's  sad  story, 
When  to  love  her  was  shame,  to  revile  her  was  glory! 

Least  bard  of  the  free!  were  it  mine  to  inherit 
The  fire  of  thy  harp  and  the  wing  of  thy  spirit, 
With  the  wrongs  which,  like  thee,  to  my  own  land  have 

bound  me, 
Did  thy  mantle  of  song  throw  its  radiance  around  me; 
Yet,  yet  on  those  bold  cliffs  might  Liberty  rally, 
And  abroad  send  her  cry  o'er  the  deep  of  each  valley. 
But  rouse  thee,  vain  dreamer!  no  fond  fancy  cherish; 
Thy  vision  of  Freedom  in  bloodshed  must  perish. 

I,  too,  shall  be  gone — though  my  name  may  be  spoken 
When  Erin  awakes,  and  her  fetters  are  broken : — 
Some  minstrel  will  come  in  the  summer  eve's  gleaming, 
When  Freedom's  young  light  on  his  spirit  is  beaming, 
To  bend  o'er  my  grave  with  a  tear  of  emotion, 
Where  calm  Avonbuee  seeks  the  kisses  of  ocean, 
And  plant  a  wild  wreath  from  the  banks  of  that  river, 
O'er  the  heart  and  the  harp  that  are  silent  forever! 

Thomas  Davis's  "Lament  for  Owen  Roe" 
has  been  called  the  most  pathetic  elegy  in  the 
language.  Callanan's  "Dirge  for  O'Sullivan 
Beare,"  purporting  to  be  a  translation  out  of 


CALLANAN  193 

the  original  Irish,  is  assuredly  the  fiercest. 
If  you  have  read  Mr.  Froude's  powerful 
story,  'The  Two  Chiefs  of  Dunboy"— and  if 
not,  I  would  urge  you  to  read  it — you  require 
no  introduction  to  Morty  Oge,  the  famous 
smuggling  patriot  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
Mr.  Froude  has  characterised  this  Irish  rebel 
with  his  usual  force  and,  it  must  be  added,  his 
usual  animus  in  respect  to  an  Irish  subject. 
There  were  critics  who  fell  foul  of  Mr. 
Froude  when  the  novel  was  published,  and 
who  did  not  scruple  to  remind  him  that  his 
forte  was  for  writing  fiction  in  the  guise  of 
history.  However  that  may  be,  "The  Two 
Chiefs  of  Dunboy"  is  literature,  and  though 
the  picture  it  presents  of  Ireland  at  the  epoch 
treated  is  often  discoloured  by  the  writer's 
innate  prejudice,  I  am  thankful  to  Mr. 
Froude  for  having  done  the  book  if  for  no 
other  reason  than  that  it  helps  me  to  realise 
the  poetical  motive  of  Callanan's  "Dirge."  It 
would  not  be  easy  to  cite  from  the  whole  range 
of  Irish  ballad  literature  a  piece  that  so  viv- 


i94  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

idly  exhibits  in  little  the  tragic  history  of  this 
people.  Alas!  the  dirge  of  Morty  Oge,  the 
reckless  darling  of  his  people,  betrayed  to  a 
foul  death  by  one  of  his  own  race  whom  he 
had  favoured  and  protected — is  it  not  the 
ground-note  of  all  that  sad  history?  Bearing 
in  mind  the  religious  character  of  the  Irish 
peasantry — even  more  deeply  emphasised  then 
than  now — the  maledictions  of  this  poem  take 
on  a  fearful  interest.  Read  Mr.  Froude's 
thrilling  chapter  on  the  "Death  of  O'Sullivan 
Beare"  (which  I  think  is  well  worth  most  of 
the  fiction  that  has  since  appeared),  and  you 
may  then,  in  some  slight  degree,  realise  the 
terrible  pathos  of  Callanan's  "Dirge." 

The  sun  on  Ivera 

No  longer  shines  brightly; 
The  voice  of  her  music 

No  longer  is  sprightly; 
No  more  to  her  maidens 

The  light  dance  is  dear, 
Since  the  death  of  our  darling, 

O'Sullivan  Beare. 


CALLANAN  195 

Had  he  died  calmly, 

I  would  not  deplore  him; 
Or  if  the  wild  strife 

Of  the  sea-war  closed  o'er  him ; 
But  with  ropes  round  his  white  limbs 

Thro'  ocean  to  trail  him, 
Like  a  fish  after  slaughter, — 

Tis  therefore  I  wail  him. 

Long  may  the  curse 

Of  his  people  pursue  them ; 
Scully,*  that  sold  him, 

And  soldiers  that  slew  him! 
One  glimpse  of  Heaven's  light 

May  they  see  never! 
May  the  hearth-stone  of  hell 

Be  their  best  bed  forever! 

In  the  hole  which  the  vile  hands 

Of  soldiers  had  made  thee; 
Unhonoured,  unshrouded, 

And  headless  they  laid  thee. 
No  sigh  to  regret  thee, 

No  eye  to  rain  o'er  thee, 
No  dirge  to  lament  thee, 

No  friend  to  deplore  thee! 
*  The  informer. 


196  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

Dear  head  of  my  darling, 

How  gory  and  pale 
These  aged  eyes  saw  thee, 

High  spiked  on  their  jail! 
That  cheek  in  the  summer  sun 

Ne'er  shall  grow  warm ; 
Nor  that  eye  e'er  catch  light, 

But  the  flash  of  the  storm! 

A  curse,  blessed  ocean, 

Is  on  thy  green  water, 
From  the  haven  of  Cork, 

To  Ivera  of  slaughter; 
Since  thy  billows  were  dyed 

With  the  red  wounds  of  fear 
Of  Muiertach  Oge, 

OurO'SullivanO'Beare! 


IRISH  BALLADRY 

IN  this  paper  and  the  preceding  one  I  have 
dealt  with  a  group  of  Irish  poets  whose 
lives  offer  a  pathetic  interest  from  resembling 
causes,  and  who  were  filled  with  that  spirit 
which  has  given  birth  to  an  unique  literature. 
But  you  are  not  to  think  that  even  with  these, 
"high  sons  of  the  lyre"  though  they  be,  we 
have  done  more  than  to  open  the  book  of  Irish 
balladry.  I  shall  make  bold  to  pronounce 
that  ballad  literature  the  finest  in  the  world. 
The  dominant  note  is  one  of  lament  for  the 
lost  liberty  of  Erin.  Often  a  single  deathless 
song  is  all  that  we  have  of  the  poet.  Scat- 
tered over  a  period  of  about  three  hundred 
years,  born  of  an  oppression  without  parallel 
and  a  resistance  without  precedent,  of  a  strug- 
gle ever  renewed  and  ever  defeated,  this  bal- 
lad literature  of  Ireland,  of  the  Irish  soil  and 

197 


198  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

of  the  Irish  heart,  is  the  priceless  treasure  of 
a  people  that  has  lost  everything  beside.  No 
literature  in  the  world  has  more  vitality  than 
this — to  say  that  it  is  written  in  blood  and 
tears,  is  to  speak  without  metaphor.  Ireland 
may  well  rejoice  her  sad  heart  with  this  glo- 
rious possession — the  testament  of  her  mar- 
tyrs, the  pledge  of  her  fealty,  the  witness  of 
her  undying  hope. 

It  has  been  finely  said  that  a  people  who, 
though  subjugated,  still  cling  to  their  native 
language,  hold  as  it  were  the  key  to  their 
prison.  The  bitter  destiny  of  the  Irish  race 
has  willed  it  to  lose  in  great  part  this  most 
precious  inheritance;  yet,  out  of  a  calamity  so 
profound,  has  the  spirit  of  this  people  wrested 
an  unique  triumph.  For  of  the  conqueror's 
tongue  it  has  forged  a  mighty  weapon  that 
has  prevailed  more  than  armies  and  fleets; 
out  of  his  alien  speech  it  has  raised  a  witness 
to  confound  him.  In  the  magic  legend,  as 
we  read,  the  enchanted  horn,  object  of  all 
men's  desire,  was  awarded  only  to  those  of 


IRISH  BALLADRY  199 

pure  heart  and  noble  purpose.  So  have  the 
Irish  poets  taken  the  oppressor's  language  as 
worthier  of  it  than  he,  and  they  have  breathed 
into  it  the  genius  of  their  race,  and  they  have 
built  from  it  a  literature  whose  glory  far  out- 
shines his  barren  conquest. 

Strange  is  the  destiny  of  the  Celtl  Con- 
quered, he  is  yet  conquering  by  grace  of  that 
native  genius  which  could  never  bow  to  the 
law  of  subjugation ;  by  virtue  of  that  renascent 
spirit  which  has  survived  the  deadliest  blows 
of  national  misfortune.  "You  must  not  laugh 
at  us  Celts,"  said  our  great  kinsman  Renan. 
"We  shall  never  build  a  Parthenon,  for  we 
have  not  the  marble;  but  we  are  skilled  in 
reading  the  heart  and  soul.  We  bury  our 
hands  in  the  entrails  of  a  man  and  withdraw 
them  full  of  the  secrets  of  infinity." 

This  precious  blue  flower  of  Irish  poesy  is 
not  a  blossom  that  blows  but  once  in  a  hun- 
dred years.  True,  it  has  its  periods  of  vigour 
and  splendour,  and  again  its  seasons  of  appar- 
ent decline.     Through  all  it  lives,  as  a  thing 


200  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

that  the  finger  of  God  has  touched  with  im- 
mortal life.  Then  one  day,  with  a  stirring  at 
the  heart,  the  secret  of  its  life  is  suddenly  re- 
vealed in  fruitage  and  flower,  as  our  own  poet 
has  conceived: 

Unchilled  by  the  rain  and  umvaked  by  the  wind, 
The  lily  lies  sleeping  thro'  Winter's  cold  hour, 

Till  Spring's  light  touch  her  fetters  unbind, 
And  daylight  and  liberty  bless  the  young  flower. 

For  the  sap  is  always  at  the  root.  And  in 
our  late  day,  when  it  is  sometimes  charged 
that  Irishmen  have  begun  to  renounce  their 
age-long  aspiration;  when  it  is  perhaps  true 
that  they  have  less  patience  than  of  yore  with 
a  literature  that  is  effective  chiefly  for  regret, 
— even  now  have  we  not  seen  the  wondrous 
miracle  appointed  to  this  ever-faithful  race? 
The  winter  is  over  once  more,  the  bare  branch 
again  puts  forth  green  leaves,  and  the  dewy 
Irish  heaven  is  filled  with  the  glory  of  song! 

Ah,  dear  kinsfolk  of  that  ever  faithful  yet 


IRISH  BALLADRY  201 

oft-divided  race,  as  we  listen  with  joyous 
hearts  to  the  choir  of  happy  songsters  that 
have  truly  made  spring  in  the  winter  of  our 
memories,  let  us  not  forget  those  earlier  min- 
strels who  sang,  faithful  unto  death,  in  darker 
days.  Let  us  often  turn  the  page  where  is 
written  the  story  of  their  devotion,  and  where 
is  poured  out  the  treasure  of  their  genius. 
No  prejudice  shall  deprive  us  of  this  litera- 
ture, since  true  culture  makes  its  own  all  gifts 
of  the  mind. 

So  I  commend  you,  kind  readers  all,  to  a 
study  rich  in  spiritual  profit,  which  in  these 
pages  I  have  no  more  than  suggested  to  you. 
Glad  am  I  to  have  been  favoured  to  lead  you 
to  the  border  of  our  ancient  Eire  of  poets, 
that  enchanted  realm  of  song  and  sacrifice; 
and  there  I  kiss  your  hands,  with  the  devout 
farewell  of  an  ancient  and  well  beloved  Irish 
minstrel : 

For  the  sake  of  the  dear  little  Isle  where  I  send  you, 
For  those  who  will  welcome  and  speed  and  befriend  you;  • 


202  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

For  the  green  hills  of  Erin  that  still  hold  my  heart  there, 
Tho'  stained  with  the  blood  of  the  patriot  and  martyr, 

My  blessing  attend  you! 

My  blessing  attend  you! 


DOCTOR  MAGINN 


I  AM  to  talk  to  you  of  two  famous  Irish- 
men who  lived  merrily  and  in  their 
earthly  course  added  much  to  the  world's 
stock  of  enjoyment.  We  shall  not,  I  trust,  be 
the  less  interested  in  the  story  that,  after  mak- 
ing the  world  largely  their  debtor,  these  two 
died  sadly  enough,  taking  at  last  a  tribute  of 
tears  from  thousands  of  hearts  which  they  had 
delighted  with  the  frolic  freedom  of  their 
genius.  And,  in  truth,  what  moral  is  more 
trite  than  this — the  merry  man  dropping  at 
the  end  of  the  play  his  humorous  mask  and 
showing  us  his  own  tristful  face  behind  the 
antic  visage  of  Harlequin?  Perhaps  the  poor 
mime  was  sad  through  it  all — only  the  chil- 
dren are  entirely  deceived  by  the  patches  and 

paint. 

203 


2o4  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

In  the  change  of  literary  fashions  and  the 
clamour  of  new  voices,  some  courage  may  be 
required  to  attempt  an  hour's  entertainment 
with  two  commonly  neglected  writers.  I  say 
neglected,  although  editions  of  their  books 
are  printed  from  time  to  time,  and  the  audi- 
ence of  elect  minds  never  fails  them. 

It  is  enough  that  the  men  with  whom  we 
have  to  deal  have  gained  an  honourable  place 
in  the  literature  of  the  last  century.  If  you 
do  not  remark  their  books  on  every  railway 
stand,  or  in  the  catalogue  of  every  circulating 
library,  you  must  not,  therefore,  conclude  that 
they  have  no  warrant  to  speak  to  you.  Nay, 
I  make  bold  to  observe  that  they  require  you 
to  bring  your  best  to  them,  and  that  one's  best 
is  not,  perhaps,  always  worthy  of  their  ac- 
ceptance. 

Still  it  remains  true  that  the  vogue  of  many 
more  recent  literary  reputations,  far  less 
worthy  on  grounds  of  high  merit,  is  not  for 
the  Doctor  or  the  Padre,  beloved  though  they 
be  of  an  appreciative  and  attached  audience. 


DOCTOR  MAGINN  205 

Whether  indeed  such  a  condition  were  de- 
sirable, offers  a  basis  for  argument,  had  we 
time  and  patience  to  go  into  it.  Having  long 
since  attained  that  Nirvana  which  awaits  the 
tired  heart  and  brain,  the  Doctor  and  the 
Padre  rest  indifferent  to  the  awards  of  gods 
and  columns.  Nor  are  they  posthumously 
pursued  by  the  literary  syndicates — so  their 
portion  great  or  small  of  immortal  fame  is  in 
no  danger  of  being  vulgarised.  The  syndi- 
cates may  dissent,  but  I  can  see  something  to 
be  envied  in  this. 

O'Connell  used  to  say  that  you  could  kick 
a  better  orator  than  himself  out  of  any  bush 
in  Ireland.  Dr.  Maginn  and  Father  Prout, 
on  a  similar  principle,  might  be  reckoned  the 
two  wittiest  Irishmen  of  the  last  century,  if 
wit  were  not  so  generally  accredited  to  the 
race  which  claims  them.  They  were  contem- 
poraries, though  Prout  survived  almost  into 
our  own  time  and  Maginn  died  twenty  years 
before  him.  There  was  a  strange  resemblance 
in  their  mental  gifts,  their  literary  acquire- 


206  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

ments,  even  their  mutual  antipathies  and 
prejudices.  The  one  was  almost  the  analogue 
of  the  other.  Both  were  good  Irishmen,  yet 
both  were  strong  Tories.  The  one  was  a 
priest  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  and, 
in  spite  of  much  that  was  uncanonical  in  his 
character,  remained  true  to  the  ancient  faith 
of  his  fathers.  The  other  was  as  stout  a 
Protestant  as  Doctor  Johnson. 

Maginn  used  to  quote  with  half-serious  ap- 
proval the  proposition  of  a  certain  Sir  Joseph 
Yorke,  to  scuttle  the  Island  of  Sorrows  and 
leave  it  under  water  for  twenty-four  hours, 
as  an  effectual  cure  for  its  political  disorders. 
It  may  be  observed  that  the  Doctor  seldom 
left  himself  under  water  for  so  long  a  period. 

Prout  was  of  the  opinion  that  Tom  Moore's 
Melodies  had  done  more  to  bring  about  Cath- 
olic Emancipation  than  all  the  tremendous 
moral  suasion  of  O'Connell,  and  he  affected 
to  hold  the  methods  of  the  great  agitator  in 
abhorrence.  I  suspect  his  Toryism  was  only 
skin-deep,    however, — not   at   all   the    robust 


DOCTOR  MAGINN  207 

article  of  Maginn — for  we  know  that  he 
(Prout)  gloried  in  a  Limerick  ancestor. 
The  politics  of  both  men  is  a  curious  study, 
but  it  may  not  detain  us,  since  we  are  chiefly 
concerned  with  their  literary  significance. 
And  here,  as  already  suggested,  the  analogy 
between  these  two  famous  men  is  most  striking. 
There  is  no  great  disparity  between  the  pro- 
ductions of  their  genius.  Nature  almost 
seems  to  have  struck  them  both  from  the  same 
die.     But  let  us  begin  with  Maginn. 


2o8  NOVA  HIBERNIA 


II 

"T  T  ERE,  early  to  bed,  lies  kind  William 
A  J.  Maginn,"  wrote  Lockhart,  in  1842. 
I  wish  you  to  keep  in  mind  that  simple  obitu- 
ary penned  by  the  noble  son-in-law  of  Walter 
Scott.  "Kind  William  Maginn!"  Yes,  it 
was  kind  William  Maginn  who  wrote: 
"Great  and  wise  men  have  loved  laughter. 
The  vain,  the  ignorant  and  the  uncivilised 
alone  have  dreaded  or  despised  it.  Let  us 
imitate  the  wise  where  we  may.  Let  our 
Christmas  laugh  echo  till  Valentine's  day; 
our  laugh  of  St.  Valentine  till  the  first  of 
April;  our  April  humour  till  May-day,  and 
our  merriment  till  midsummer.  And  so  let 
us  go  on  from  holiday  to  holiday,  philoso- 
phers in  laughter,  at  least,  till,  at  the  end  of  our 
century,  we  die  the  death  of  old  Democritus 
— cheerful,  happy  and  contented,  surrounded 


DOCTOR  MAGINN  209 

by  many  a  friend,  but  without  an  enemy,  and 
remembered  principally  because  we  have 
never  either  in  life  or  in  death,  given  pain  for 
a  moment  to  anyone  that  lived!" 

Ireland  is  a  very  small  country,  to  be  sure, 
as  a  matter  of  square  miles,  though  we  have 
been  obliged  to  hear  so  much  of  it;  but  it 
does  seem  amazing  that  so  many  famous  and 
illustrious  Irishmen  should  have  to  be  cred- 
ited to  the  city  and  county  of  Cork.  A  fair 
city  is  Cork,  with  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
sea-ways  in  the  world  leading  to  her  doors. 
Alas!  many  of  those  who  have  loved  her  and 
owed  to  her  their  birth,  have  gone  out  upon 
that  shining  track,  never  more  to  return,  save 
in  their  dreams.  We  shall  hear  presently  of 
one  who  carried  a  wistful  memory  of  her  dur- 
ing years  of  exile  in  alien  lands  until  at  last  it 
found  expression  in  a  song  which  has  wreathed 
his  name  with  hers  in  an  unfading  laurel. 

Maginn  and  Father  Prout  were  both  born 
in  this  delectable  city  of  Cork.  So  was  their 
friend,    Maclise,    the    painter,    the    Alfred 


210  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

Croquis  of  Fraser's  Magazine,  and  the 
worthy  associate  of  Maginn  in  making  the 
famous  "Gallery  of  Literary  Characters." 
Maclise  is  also  memorable  as  the  friend  of 
William  Makepeace  Thackeray,  greatest  of 
all  who  sate  in  the  brilliant  circle  of  Regina* 
It  would  be  easy,  by  the  way,  to  draw  up  a 
catalogue  of  eminent  Corkonians.  There 
was  "Honest  Dick"  Milliken,  who  wrote  the 
celebrated  "Groves  of  Blarney," — now,  alas! 
unsung,  yet  still  potent  to  keep  his  honest 
name  from  oblivion.  There  was  Barry,  the 
painter,  and  Sheridan  Knowles,  the  drama- 
tist; there  was  Thomas  Davis,  heart  of  fire' 
and  tongue  of  gold,  and  poor  Callanan,  bard 
of  Gougaune  Barra.  But,  indeed,  to  rehearse 
the  roll  of  Cork's  illustrious  sons  might,  in 
the  end,  become  as  tiresome  as  the  catalogue 
of  the  ships  in  Homer.  Modesty  forbids  my 
mentioning  the  name  of  a  certain  unimportant 
person    (here  peeping  over  your  shoulder) 

*  Fraser's  Magazine. 


DOCTOR  MAGINN  211 

who  has  the  privilege  of  claiming  Cork  as  his 
birthplace. 

So  William  Maginn  was  born  in  Cork,  the 
son  of  a  schoolmaster  who  knew  vastly  more 
than  Goldsmith's  immortal  pedagogue,  for  he 
taught  the  classics  and  other  useful  knowl- 
edge, and  conducted  withal  a  flourishing 
academy.  But  nothing  about  the  academy 
flourished  at  the  rate  that  young  Maginn  did 
in  scholarship.  The  mere  summary  of  his 
acquirements  before  he  was  eighteen  is  appal- 
ling. Maginn  pere  knew  his  son  was  a  prod- 
igy, and  with  true  Irish  pride  set  himself  to 
bring  out  all  that  was  in  him.  You  remem- 
ber how  Dr.  Blimber  used  to  "bring  on"  the 
young  gentlemen  under  his  tutelage.  It 
probably  wasn't  a  circumstance  to  the  bring- 
ing on  of  young  Maginn.  He  graduated 
from  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  before  he  was 
eighteen.  He  died  under  fifty,  and  while 
still  a  young  man  he  had  mastered  the  Latin, 
Greek,    German,    Hebrew,    Sanscrit,    Syriac, 


212  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

Irish  or  Gaelic,  French,  Spanish,  Portuguese, 
Swedish,  Turkish  and  Magyar  languages. 
It  is  also  certain,  as  we  know  from  his  works, 
that  he  learned  soundly  and  well  the  English 
tongue:  which  is  quite  an  accomplishment  of 
itself.  But  there  is,  incredible  as  it  may 
seem,  no  reason  to  doubt  that  his  knowledge 
of  all  the  languages  named  was  exact  and  pro- 
found. His  translations,  serious  and  bur- 
lesque, sufficiently  attest  his  mastery  of  the 
classic  tongues.  His  essays  on  the  plays  and 
learning  of  Shakespeare  show  his  command 
of  the  splendid  resources  of  our  English 
speech.  Edward  Kenealy,  who  has  left  us  a 
touching  memoir  of  Maginn,  and  who  was 
himself  a  linguist  of  great  attainments,  in  a 
letter  to  Sir  Robert  Peel  characterised  Ma- 
ginn as  "the  most  universal  scholar  of  the 
age."     And  Lockhart  wrote  of  him: 

"Be  a  Bentley,  if  you  can,  but  omit  the  bru- 
tality; rival  Parr,  eschewing  all  pomposity; 
outlinguist  old  Magliabecchi,  and  yet  be  a 
man  of  the  world;  emulate  Swift  in  satire,  but 


DOCTOR  MAGINN  213 

suffer  not  one  squeeze  of  his  saeva  indignatio 
to  eat  your  own  heart;  be  and  do  all  this — and 
the  Doctor  will  no  longer  be  unique." 

Unhappily  for  Maginn's  status  in  litera- 
ture, this  enormous  versatility  was  purchased 
at  the  cost  of  more  enduring  performance. 
The  Doctor  did  too  many  things  well  to 
achieve  a  surpassing  success  in  any  single  line. 
As  he  himself  would  have  said,  with  whim- 
sical pedantry,  the  labour  was  "too  auto- 
schediastical."  It  has  been  said  that  men 
made  good  books  out  of  his  table  talk — with- 
out crediting  him,  of  course.  The  possessor 
of  one  talent  is  not  seldom  more  fortunate  than 
he  who  has  ten.  Maginn  wrote  the  first  of  the 
iamous  Nodes  Ambrosianae  papers,  and  many 
of  the  succeeding  series  which  through  long 
years  delighted  the  cultivated  readers  of  the 
British  Islands.  They  brought  fame  and  for- 
tune to  Blackwood's  Magazine,  and  more  spe- 
cifically, to  John  Wilson,  better  known  under 
the  pen-name  of  Christopher  North.  When 
Maginn's  active  brain  was  worn  out  and  his 


214  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

generous  heart  stilled  forever,  the  canny  Scots- 
man forgot  to  mention  the  obligation. 

Grievous  as  the  fact  is  to  all  who  wish  that 
genius  may  receive  its  due,  we  may  be  sure 
that  it  would  not  have  been  very  distressful 
to  William  Maginn.  The  carelessness  with 
which  he  regarded  the  fate  of  his  productions, 
may  be  paralleled  only  in  the  case  of  Shakes- 
peare. He  rarely  gave  the  authority  of  his 
name  to  any  of  his  writings,  which  he  threw 
off  with  incredible  ease  and  fertility.  Yet 
if  only  the  pencil  sketches  accompanying  the 
"Gallery  of  Literary  Characters"  were  to 
survive,  they  would  insure  the  fame  of 
Maginn  as  the  most  brilliant  and  audacious 
wit  of  his  generation. 

Not  long  ago,  Mr.  Saintsbury,  the  eminent 
English  critic,  paid  a  significant  tribute  to 
the  merits  of  Dr.  Maginn,  in  tracing  the  early 
work  of  Thackeray.  Maginn  was  Thack- 
eray's first  editor.  Many  other  notable  liter- 
ary men  confessed  the  benefits  of  his  kindly 
word  and  helping  hand.     Careless  of  his  own 


DOCTOR  MAGINN  215 

fame  and  selfish  interest,  he  was  zealous  for 
those  of  others.  They  say  Thackeray  satir- 
ised him  in  the  character  of  Captain  Shan- 
don.  I  don't  believe  it.  I  prefer  to  believe, 
instead,  that  the  great  English  writer  was 
thinking  rather  of  the  erratic,  brilliant 
Maginn  whom  he  knew  so  well,  than  of  Gold- 
smith, when  he  penned  these  words: 

"Think  of  him,  reckless,  thriftless,  vain  if 
you  like,  but  merciful,  gentle,  generous,  full 
of  love  and  pity.  He  passes  out  of  our  life 
and  goes  to  render  his  account  beyond  it. 
.  .  .  Think  of  the  noble  spirits  that  admired 
and  deplored  him  ...  his  humour  delight- 
ing us  still  ...  his  very  weaknesses  beloved 
and  familiar." 

There  is  a  story  that  Thackeray,  in  his 
early  period,  long  before  he  had  himself 
caught  the  ear  of  the  town,  loaned  a  goodish 
sum  of  money  to  Maginn — which,  of  course, 
was  never  repaid — and  that  the  circumstance 
aided  materially  in  the  dispersion  of  the 
young    man's    fortune.     Many    years    after- 


216  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

ward,  when  poor  Maginn  had  passed  away, 
Father  Prout  gave  the  true  history  of  the  af- 
fair to  Blanchard  Jerrold.  Thackeray,  he 
said,  was  eager  to  found  a  magazine,  which 
should  hold  its  own  with  the  best.  He 
wanted  an  editor  and  Prout  told  him  William 
Maginn  was  his  man.  A  meeting  was 
brought  about  at  the  Crown  Head  tavern  in 
Drury  Lane — Maginn  was  always  the  better 
for  business  after  a  lubrication.  He  stipu- 
lated for  five  hundred  pounds,  to  be  expended 
in  preliminary  operations — "clearing  the 
decks,"  was  the  Doctor's  idiom.  The  money 
was  advanced,  the  new  literary  venture  sent 
forth,  handseled  with  all  the  resource  and 
skill  and  brilliancy  of  Maginn.  It  lived  just 
six  months  and  bequeathed  an  invaluable  ex- 
perience to  the  future  author  of  "Pendennis." 
After  all,  pecuniary  debts  lie  easier,  it  may 
be,  than  literary  obligations  among  the  tribe 
of  Scriblerus.  I  suspect  that  Barry  Lyndon 
has  given  a  slight  I.  O.  U.  to  Ensign  Morgan 
O'Doherty. 


DOCTOR  MAGINN  217 

Maginn  in  his  most  surprising  feats  of 
genius  and  scholarship  must  always  remain 
"caviare  to  the  general."  It  is  not  difficult 
to  see  that  he  could  not  have  produced  his 
incomparable  burlesques  in  the  classic  lan- 
guages by  simply  swallowing  lexicons  through 
a  long  course  of  years.  You  may  have  little 
Latin,  but,  with  a  small  share  of  trouble,  you 
can't  miss  the  heroic  effect  of  Maginn's  ren- 
dering of  the  famous  old  English  ballad  of 
"Chevy  Chase"  into  the  tongue  of  Virgil. 
Who  that  has  ever  read  it,  can  forget  the 
opening  lines? — 

Perseus  ex  Northumbria 

Vovebat  Diis  iratis, 
Venare  inter  dies  tres, 

In  montibus  Cheviatis; 
Contempt  is  forti  Douglaso 

Et  omnibus  cognatis. 

Or  this  infinitely  comic  parody  of  what 
Matthew  Arnold  was  so  fond  ot  calling  the 
grand  style? 


218  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

O  dies!  dies!  dies  trux! 

Sic  finit  cantus  primus; 
Si  de  venatu  plura  vis, 

Plura  narrare  scimus. 


DOCTOR  MAGINN  219 


III 

THERE  is  a  well  defined  Age  of  Drink  in 
the  history  of  English  letters  and  social 
life.  From  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury it  persists  well  into  the  nineteenth.  I 
hasten  to  say  that  at  no  time  has  the  great  Eng- 
lish nation  been  indifferent  to  strong  drink. 
Men  drank  hard  when  William  Maginn  went 
up  to  London — they  had  drunk  harder  less 
than  a  generation  before.  Thackeray  glances 
brilliantly  at  all  this  guzzling  and  profligacy 
in  his  lecture  on  the  fourth  George.  Princes 
of  the  blood  were  not  seldom  as  drunk  as 
Wapping  soldiers.  Of  course  the  nobility 
followed  suit.  The  members  of  the  honour- 
able profession  of  the  bar  loved  wine,  we  are 
told,  as  well  as  the  wool-sack.  Ladies  of 
quality  tippled  and  often  had  great  need  of 
their  sedan  chairs.     O   temporal     O   mores/ 


220  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

I  wonder  if  all  this  be  really  changed  in  the 
present  year  of  grace,  or  doth  Belgravia  re- 
main as  a  tinkling  cymbal?  .  .  . 

Poor  Maginn  drank  far  more  than  was 
good  for  him,  on  account  of  his  delicate  con- 
stitution and  the  fact  that  he  was,  like  Horace, 
a  Mercurial  man.  Charles  Lamb,  you  re- 
member, had  the  same  weakness  and  wrote  an 
essay,  "The  Confessions  of  a  Drunkard," 
which  he  afterward  tried  to  explain  away, 
but  which  I  fear  conveyed  more  truth  than 
poetry. 

I  say  Maginn  drank  too  much,  but  it  would 
be  unjust  to  paint  him  as  the  Horrible  Ex- 
ample among  literary  men  of  that  age.  Other 
men  of  his  time  and  company  drank  more — 
some  men,  you  know,  do  this  better  than  others 
— and  yet  contrived  to  escape  reproach.  The 
Homeric  potations  of  Kit  North  and  his 
friends  are  not  so  much  matters  of  literature 
as  they  are  matters  of  fact.  Maginn  wrote  a 
table  of  drinking  maxims  which  had  a  famous 
vogue  in  the  clubs.     Wine  and  wit  are  there, 


DOCTOR  MAGINN  221 

contrary  to  the  adage,  in  equal  proportions. 
He  has  done  the  trick  for  us  in  verse,  too,  and, 
remembering  how  many  good  men  have  had 
their  moments  of  frailty  since  Father  Noah 
discovered  the  vine,  we  shall  thank  him  for 
his  jolly  song  of 

THE  WINE-BIBBER'S  GLORY. 

Quo  me  Bacche  rapis  tui  plenum? 

— Horace. 

If  Horatius  Flaccus  made  jolly  old  Bacchus 

So  often  his  favourite  theme; 
If  in  him  it  was  classic  to  praise  his  old  Massic 

And  Falernian  to  gulp  in  a  stream ; 
If  Falstaff's  vagaries  'bout  sack  and  canaries 

Have  pleased  us  again  and  again ; 
Shall  we  not  make  merry  on  Port,  Claret  or  Sherry, 

Madeira  and  sparkling  Champagne? 

First  Port,  the  potation  preferred  by  our  nation 

To  all  the  small  drink  of  the  French; 
'Tis  the  best  standing  liquor  for  layman  or  vicar, 

The  army,  the  navy,  the  bench ; 
'Tis  strong  and  substantial, — believe  me,  no  man  shall 

Good  port  from  my  dining  room  send. 


222  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

In  your  soup — after  cheese — every  way  it  will  please, 
But  most  tete-a-tete  with  a  friend. 

Fair  Sherry,  Port's  sister,  for  years  they  dismissed  her 

To  the  kitchen  to  flavor  the  jellies  ; 
There  long  she  was  banish'd  and  well  nigh  had  vanish'd 

To  comfort  the  kitchen  maids'  bellies, — 
Till  his  Majesty  fixt,  he  thought  Sherry  when  sixty 

Years  old  like  himself  quite  the  thing: 
So  I  think  it  but  proper  to  fill  a  tip-topper 

Of  Sherry  to  drink  to  the  King. 

Though  your  delicate  Claret  by  no  means  goes  far,  it 

Is  famed  for  its  exquisite  flavour; 
'Tis  a  nice  provocation  to  wise  conversation, 

Queer  blarney  or  harmless  palaver; 
'Tis  the  bond  of  society — no  inebriety 

Follows  a  swig  of  the  blue; 
One  may  drink  a  whole  ocean  and  ne'er  feel  commotion 

Or  headache  from  Chateau  Margoux. 

But  though  Claret  is  pleasant  to  take  for  the  present, 

On  the  stomach  it  sometimes  feels  cold; 
So  to  keep  it  all  clever  and  comfort  your  liver, 

Take  a  glass  of  Madeira  that's  old. 
When't  has  sailed  for  the  Indies  a  cure  for  all  wind  'tis, 

And  colic  'twill  put  to  the  rout; 


DOCTOR  MAGINN  223 

All  doctors  declare  a  good  glass  of  Madeira 
The  best  of  all  things  for  the  gout. 

Then   Champagne!  dear  Champagne!  oh,  how  gladly  I 
drain  a 

Whole  bottle  of  Oeil  de  Perdrix 
To  the  eye  of  my  charmer,  to  make  my  love  warmer, 

If  cool  that  love  ever  could  be. 
I  could  toast  her  forever — but  never,  oh  never 

Would  I  her  dear  name  so  profane; 
So  if  e'er  when  I'm  tipsy,  it  slips  to  my  lips,  I 

Wash  it  back  to  my  heart  with  Champagne! 

The  gentle  art  of  literary  "roasting"  seems 
to  have  declined  in  virulence  since  the  days 
of  Maginn.  He  was  easily  the  first  practi- 
tioner of  his  time,  and  his  slashing  reviews 
were  long  the  feature  of  Fraser's  Magazine, 
and  other  periodicals.  His  editors  have  res- 
cued a  sufficient  number  of  them  to  give  us 
a  formidable  idea  of  the  Doctor's  prowess. 
The  papers  in  which  he  pretended  to  expose 
the  plagiarisms  of  Tom  Moore  are  among 
the  most  learned  and  ingenious.  Maginn 
was  a  Tory  of  the  Tories,  and  it  was  not  to 


224  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

be  expected  that  he  would  bate  of  his  edge 
for  the  warbler  of  Lansdowne  House. 
Moore  was  greatly  annoyed  by  the  Doctor's 
roguish  animadversions,  but  he  did  not  pro- 
ceed to  the  extreme  of  challenging  him  to 
mortal  combat,  as  in  the  memorable  passage 
with  Jeffrey.  I  suspect  Moore  feared  the 
Doctor's  terrible  wit,  his  "paper  pellets  of  the 
brain,"  even  more  than  his  powder  and  ball. 
As  I  have  said,  literary  manners  have  some- 
what improved  since  Maginn  plied  his  merci- 
less pen  in  Fraser's  or  Bentley's.  His  affair 
with  Mr.  Grantley  Berkley  sets  a  mark  upon 
the  time.  It  came  near  having  as  many  ele- 
ments of  tragedy  as  sometimes  attend  the  tak- 
ing off  of  a  Western  or  Southern  editor  in 
this  glad  free  land.  Mr.  Grantley  Berkley, 
the  younger  son  of  a  noble  house  in  whose 
escutcheon  there  was  a  very  recent  and  ugly 
bar  sinister,  wrote  and  caused  to  be  published 
a  novel  of  indifferent  merit.  The  chief  of- 
fence of  the  author,  to  Maginn's  mind,  con- 
sisted in  his  expatiating  upon  the  ancestral 


DOCTOR  MAGINN  225 

glories  of  the  house  of  Berkley,  in  face  of 
the  notorious  fact  alluded  to.  One  cannot 
read  Maginn's  review  of  the  book  even  at 
this  distance  of  time  without  a  shudder. 
Father  Prout  glanced  over  the  copy  and  re- 
marked to  James  Fraser,  publisher  of  the 
magazine,  "Jemmy,  this  means  trouble!" 
And  it  did. 

A  novelist  of  our  day  would  accept  such  a 
roast  as  a  splendid  advertisement.  Or  he 
might  defend  himself  anonymously  and  with 
a  heroic  show  of  virtue.  Mr.  Berkley's  noble 
blood  would  brook  no  amende  short  of  assault 
and  battery.  Accordingly,  backed  by  his 
brother  and  a  hired  bruiser,  he  went  to  seek 
"satisfaction."  Finding  Fraser  alone  at  the 
publishing  office,  the  three  set  upon  him  and 
so  grievously  injured  him  that  he  lived  but 
a  short  time  afterward.  He  lived  too  long, 
however,  to  admit  of  a  charge  of  murder  or 
manslaughter.  The  affair  and  its  subsequent 
airing  in  the  courts  was  the  sensation  of  Lon- 
don.    Before  the  trial  was  ended  Dr.  Maginn 


226  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

had  a  hostile  meeting  with  the  aggrieved 
author.  Three  shots  were  exchanged  with- 
out effect.  Fraser's  assailants  were  fined  in 
a  small  amount,  and  Maginn  wrote  a  vigorous 
account  of  the  whole  affair,  which,  to  a  pres- 
ent-day reader,  excels  in  curious  interest  the 
bulk  of  his  works.  It  will  always  occupy  a 
page  in  that  pleasing  history,  so  dear  to  Ad- 
dison, of  "Man  and  the  Town." 


DOCTOR  MAGINN  227 


IV 

MAGINN  had  his  bit  of  romance  and  a 
sad  one  enough  it  was.  Some  who 
have  written  upon  him  say  it  had  much  to  do 
in  confirming  the  habits  of  dissipation  which 
helped  him  down  the  descent  of  Avernus.  I 
have  my  doubts  as  to  that,  but  at  least  the  the- 
ory does  no  great  violence  to  the  Doctor's  head 
and  heart.  His  own  idea,  as  we  know,  was 
that  a  man  who  would  not  go  to  the  devil  for  a 
woman  was  not  good  for  much.  The  lady  in 
the  case  was  Letitia  Elizabeth  Landon,  an 
English  poetess  of  the  thirties,  whose  verses 
were  once  held  in  critical  esteem,  and  whose 
initials,  "L.  E.  L.,"  were  potent  to  thrill  our 
charming  grandmothers  in  that  far-off  sen- 
timental time.  Miss  Landon  wrote  and  pub- 
lished more  poetry  than  the  Sweet  Singer  of 
Michigan,  but  she  did  not  live  long  enough 


228  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

after  marriage  to  take  the  world  into  her  con- 
fidence. Thus  her  passion  has  a  vestal  note 
which  is  lacking  to  the  later  and  more  com- 
petent lucubrations  of  the  American  Sappho. 
But  her  marriage  was  a  dreadful  business  to 
Maginn,  who  admired  her  prodigiously  and, 
indeed,  gave  her  a  chance  of  immortality 
which  the  lady's  own  works  do  not  warrant, 
by  inserting  a  laudatory  notice  of  her  in  the 
famous   "Gallery  of  Literary  Characters." 

Maginn  was  then  able  to  make  or  unmake 
a  literary  reputation.  The  lady,  who  really 
rhymed  well,  was  flattered  by  the  great  edi- 
tor's praise.  He  called  her  the  Tenth  Muse 
and  proved  it  with  a  show  of  poetic  imagina- 
tion which,  could  the  lady  have  claimed  as 
much,  would  have  gone  far  to  confirm  her  in 
the  title.  But  however  Maginn  might  ad- 
mire and  belaud  her  and  set  her  up  in  the 
estimation  of  the  literary  world,  he  couldn't 
marry  her,  for  the  excellent  reason  that  there 
was  already  a  Mrs.  Maginn,  of  whom  we 
know  no  more.     So  the  Tenth  Muse,  weary- 


DOCTOR  MAGINN  229 

ing  at  last  of  platonics,  went  in  bravely  like 
every  true  daughter  of  Eve  to  have  her 
illusions  shattered.  She  married  a  Scotch 
captain  with  a  furious  temper,  who  took  the 
poor  Muse  away  with  him  to  Cape  Coast 
Castle  in  Africa,  where  he  commanded. 
There  she  lived  only  a  few  months,  and  the 
circumstances  of  her  death  were  so  strange 
that  it  was  long  believed  she  had  made  away 
with  herself  to  escape  the  violence  of  her  hus- 
band. 

And  William  Maginn,  who  had  been  going 
down  for  some  time,  but  in  an  undecided  way, 
so  that  his  friends  indulged  the  hope  that  he 
might  think  better  of  it  and  retrace  his  steps, 
— William  Maginn,  after  the  death  of  this 
woman,  went  on  down  hill  like  a  man  who 
knew  his  road  and  would  follow  it  to  the  end. 

We  may  not  dwell  on  the  close  of  Maginn's 
life,  which  was  as  gloomy  as  its  meridian  had 
been  brilliant.  As  Moore  says  of  a  more  fa- 
mous Irishman,  Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan, 


230  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

whom  Maginn  strongly  resembled  in  his  last 
evil  fortune,  he  "passed  too  often  the  Rubicon 
of  the  cup."  Dunned  by  bailiffs,  dragged  to 
the  Fleet  prison  for  debt,  reduced  to  the 
meanest  shifts  to  support  existence — in  read- 
ing the  last  sad  chapter,  one  is  reminded  of 
the  tragedy  of  Savage  and  that  race  of  ill- 
fated  men  of  genius  in  whose  misfortunes 
Johnson  shared  and  of  whom  Macaulay  de- 
scribes him  as  the  last  survivor.  This  melan- 
choly distinction  belongs  rather  to  William 
Maginn.  Neglected  by  the  great  party 
which  he  had  served  so  ably  and  long  with 
his  pen,  shattered  in  health  by  privation  and 
disease, — he  sank  lower  and  lower.  After 
much  troubling  comes  the  great  peace.  It 
came  to  poor  William  Maginn  in  the  48th 
year  of  his  age,  in  the  year  1842,  at  the  town 
of  Walton-on-Thames,  to  which  he  had  re- 
tired from  the  great  Babel  he  loved  so  well. 
Sad  and  untimely  as  was  that  death,  and  sor- 
did as  was  the  setting  of  the  last  scene  of  all, 
we  may  not  look  upon  it  without  a  solemn 


DOCTOR  MAGINN  231 

interest  and  pity.  Nay,  a  beam  of  glory 
lighted  up  the  last  hours  of  the  broken  man 
of  genius.  The  master  passion  strong  even 
in  death,  the  courage  of  immortal  mind, 
strikes  us  mute  in  the  presence  of  this  tragedy. 
Lying  with  his  beloved  Homer  open  upon  his 
breast  and  unconscious  of  the  nearness  of  the 
end,  he  dictated  to  his  faithful  friend  Kenealy 
a  translation  from  the  classic  page.  Thus,  in 
a  manner  thrilling  with  high  emotion,  the  Si- 
lence came  to  him:  and  so,  with  a  reverent 
thought,  we  may  leave  "kind  William 
Maginn." 


232  NOVA  HIBERNIA 


NOTE  ON  GRANTLEY   BERKLEY 

IN  his  third  paper  on  "The  Songs  of  Hor- 
ace" (originally  published,  like  the  rest 
of  the  series,  in  Fraser's  Magazine),  Father 
Prout  makes  the  following  caustic  reference 
to  the  Berkley-Maginn  affair: 

"On  a  late  occasion  the  unanimous  expression  of  cor- 
dial sympathy  which  burst  from  every  organ  of  public 
opinion,  in  reprobation  of  a  brutal  assault,  has  been  to 
us  consolatory  and  gratifying.  We  shall  hazard  the 
charge  of  vanity,  perhaps,  but  we  can  not  help  replying 
to  such  testimonies  of  fellow-feeling  toward  ourselves  in 
the  language  of  a  gifted  Roman — Est  mihi  jucunda  in 
malis,  et  grata  in  dolore,  vestra  erga  me  voluntas;  sed 
curam  de  me  quaeso  deponite* — (Cicero).  The  inter- 
ests  of   literature    are   still    uppermost    in    our   thoughts, 

*  Which   may  be   Englished — 

"Your  good  will  toward  myself  is  agreeable  to  me  in  mis- 
fortunes and  grateful  in  suffering,  but  I  pray  you  have  no 
anxiety  concerning  me." 

In  those  days  no  article  was  deemed  "finished"  without  a 
sprinkling  of  classical   quotations.     We  have  changed   all  that. 


DOCTOR  MAGINN  233 

and  take  precedency  of  any  selfish  considerations.  We 
will  ever  be  found  at  our  post,  intrepidly  denouncing  the 
vulgar  arrogance  of  booby  scribblers,  unsparingly  cen- 
suring the  intrusion  into  literary  circles  of  silly  pretend- 
ers, ignorant  horse-jockeys  and  brainless  bullies." 

It  is  time  to  dismiss  Mr.  Grantley  Berkley. 

The  Hon.  Grantley  Fitzhardinge  Berkley 
belongs  to  the  category  of  famous  bad  authors. 
His  name  is  known  of  many  who  never  saw 
and  never  cared  to  see  his  paltry  books. 
Maginn  and  Prout  have  preserved  him  from 
time's  erasure  in  the  mordant  acid  of  their 
wit.  There  most  curious  readers  are  content 
to  learn  of  him,  leaving  his  "works"  in  the 
limbo  of  the  illustrious  obscure.  That  Berk- 
ley was  a  man  of  some  spirit,  it  cannot  be 
gainsaid:  he  long  survived  his  two  terrible 
enemies  of  "Fraser's,"  dying  in  188 1  at  a 
patriarchal  age. 

In  his  "Life  and  Reminiscences,"  written 
in  his  lying  old  age,  Grantley  Berkley  took 
the  ass's  privilege  of  kicking  the  dead  lion, 
and  sought  to  cast  unmerited  obloquy  upon 


234  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

the  memory  of  Maginn.  Berkley's  account 
of  the  latter's  "persecution"  of  Miss  Landon 
and  of  his  own  chivalrous  intervention,  has 
been  totally  discredited  by  honest  critics. 
The  literary  pretender  is  shown  in  Berkley's 
laborious  and  far-fetched  attempt  to  prove  a 
motive  for  Maginn's  savage  critique  on  his 
novel  "Berkley  Castle."     Enough  of  him. 

Here  is  Lockhart's  elegy  on  Maginn,  mem- 
orable enough  for  its  mixture  of  wit  and 
truth  and  pathos: 

Here,  early  to  bed,  lies  kind  William  Maginn, 
Who  with  genius,  wit,  learning,  life's  trophies  to  win, 
Had  neither  great  Lord  nor  rich  cit  of  his  kin, 
Nor  discretion  to  set  himself  up,  as  to  tin; 
So  his  portion  soon  spent,  like  the  poor  heir  of  Lynn, 
He  turned  author  while  yet  was  no  beard  on  his  chin; 
And  whoever  was  out,  or  whoever  was  in, 
For  the  Tories  his  fine  Irish  brains  he  would  spin, 
Who  received  prose  and  rhyme  with  a  promising  grin, 
"Go  ahead,  you  queer  fish,  and  more  power  to  your  fin," 
But  to  save  from  starvation,  stirr'd  never  a  pin. 
Light  for  long  was  his  heart,  though  his  breeches  were 
thin, 


DOCTOR  MAGINN  235 

Else  his  acting  for  certain  was  equal  to  Quin ; 
But  at  last  he  was  beat  and  sought  help  from  the  bin, 
(All  the  same  to  the  Doctor,  from  claret  to  gin), 
Which  led  swiftly  to  gaol  with  consumption  therein. 
It  was  much  when  the  bones  rattled  loose  in  his  skin, 
He  got  leave  to  die  here,  out  of  Babylon's  din. 
Barring  drink  and  the  girls,  I  ne'er  heard  of  a  sin — 
Many  worse,  better  few,  than  bright,  broken  Maginn! 


FATHER  PROUT 


IN  the  beautiful  and  well-beloved  city  of 
Cork,  within  the  sound  of  those  bells 
whose  music  he  has  bidden  us  all  to  hear,  was 
born  Francis  Sylvester  Mahony,  famous  in 
the  world  of  letters  and  dear  to  every  Irish 
heart  as  Father  Prout.  Let  us  in  the  short 
space  we  may  devote  to  him  call  often  by 
that  name  which  he  has  made  immortal. 

I  have  noted  the  neglect  into  which  Maginn 
and  Prout  have  fallen  with  regard  to  the 
great  body  of  readers.  It  is,  however,  true 
that  Prout's  literary  estate  is  in  much  better 
case  than  that  of  his  friend  and  contemporary. 

Since  its  publication,  over  a  half  century 
ago,  the  "Reliques"  of  Father  Prout  has 
steadily   advanced    in    literary   favour.     The 

suffrages    of    all    competent   scholars    award 

236 


FATHER  PROUT  237 

Prout  the  rank  of  a  classic.  His  love  of  Hor- 
ace and  profound  acquaintance  with  that  most 
charming  of  poets;  his  exquisite  and  varied 
culture;  the  expression  of  his  native  genius, 
which  has  been  defined  as  a  "combination  of 
the  Teian  lyre  and  Irish  bagpipe,  of  the 
Ionian  dialect  and  Cork  brogue" ;  the  audacity 
and  fertility  of  his  wit, — all  concur  in  making 
Prout  the  delight  of  the  cultivated  reader. 
Another  fortunate  circumstance  is,  that  he 
does  not  carry  too  much  baggage  for  immor- 
tality. There  he  is  for  you,  within  the  com- 
pass of  a  tidy  book,  like  Horace  himself,  whom 
he  has  so  helped  us  to  love  and  understand. 
Ah,  they  were  kindred  spirits,  the  little  man 
of  Rome  and  the  little  man  of  Cork — but  we 
are  to  consider  that  later  on. 

Francis  Mahony's  vocation  in  life  was 
early  determined  for  him,  as  has  been  the 
laudable  custom  of  pious  Irish  parents.  Per- 
haps the  reverence  for  the  priesthood  is  not 
so  marked  in  any  other  people.  It  must  also 
be  said  that  this  fine  sentiment  has  never  stood 


238  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

in  need  of  the  amplest  justification.  The 
Irish  priesthood  have  contributed  no  small 
share  to  the  glory  of  the  Catholic  church,  and 
every  page  of  Irish  history  is  illustrated  with 
their  heroism  and  sacrifice.  Hence,  the  fond 
ambition  to  have  "a  priest  in  the  family"  has 
sanctified  many  a  humble  hearth.  Doubtless 
it  has  had  much  to  do  in  weaving  the  destiny 
of  the  ill-fated  island.  Leave  it  out,  and  the 
chequered  story  of  Ireland  is  baffling  in  the 
extreme. 

It  might  have  been  expected  that  a  lad  of 
such  parts  as  young  Mahony  early  displayed 
would  have  fulfilled  the  fond  hope  of  his 
parents  and  become  a  credit  to  the  Church. 
The  wise  Jesuits,  his  first  masters,  knew  bet- 
ter. Trained  in  the  perception  of  character 
and  motive,  reading  all  the  secrets  of  the 
heart  with  wonderful  subtlety,  it  was  seldom 
they  erred  in  tracing  the  bent  of  a  mind 
which  they  had  assisted  to  form.  It  is  no 
slight  testimony  to  their  acuteness  in  divining 
character  that  they  recognised  in  the  young 


FATHER  PROUT  239 

postulant  for  the  priesthood  the  future  satirist, 
and  that  they  combated  from  the  first  his  de- 
cision to  enter  the  sacred  calling. 

But  they  taught  him  well,  and  he  never  for- 
got the  debt  he  owed  them.  Careless  as  he 
afterwards  became  in  scattering  the  barbed 
arrows  of  his  wit,  he  never  failed  in  affection 
and  respect  for  the  great  Order  of  Loyola  un- 
der whose  tutelage  he  had  drunk  at  the  founts 
of  classic  learning.  One  of  the  best  works  of 
his  pen  is  a  vindication  of  the  Society  of  Jesus 
from  the  infamous  charges  hurled  against  it 
by  ignorant  prejudice  or  deliberate  malice. 
The  march  of  the  Jesuits  through  Europe  for 
two  centuries  he  has  likened  to  the  retreat  of 
Xenophon  with  his  ten  thousand.  In  a  para- 
graph worthy  of  Macaulay,  he  describes  the 
great  Bossuet  "coming  forth  from  the  College 
of  Dijon,  in  Burgundy,  to  rear  his  mitred 
front  at  the  court  of  a  despot,  and  to  fling  the 
bolts  of  his  tremendous  oratory  among  a 
crowd  of  elegant  voluptuaries."  "They 
cradled  the  genius  of  Corneille,"  he  exclaims; 


240  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

"Moliere  was  the  fruit  of  their  classic  guid- 
ance. Scarcely  a  name  known  to  literature 
in  the  seventeenth  century  which  does  not 
bear  testimony  to  their  prowess  in  the  prov- 
ince of  education."  And,  with  a  caustic  free- 
dom, which  his  wise  preceptors  would  have 
deprecated,  he  scores  the  Franciscan  Pope 
Clement  XIV  for  his  act  in  issuing  the  famous 
Bull  of  July,  1773,  by  which  the  great  Society 
of  Jesus  was  suppressed. 

Young  Mahony's  probation  was  a  long  one 
and,  as  I  have  said,  the  end  approved  the  wis- 
dom of  his  masters.  At  12  years  of  age  he 
was  sent  to  the  Jesuit  College  of  Saint  Acheul, 
at  Amiens,  France;  thence  to  the  Parisian 
seminary  of  the  Order,  and  still  later  to  the 
country  house  at  Montrouge.  To  the  Jesuit 
College  at  Rome  he  went  for  philosophy  and 
theology;  and,  for  a  final  test,  he  was  packed 
off  to  the  College  of  Clongowes,  in  his  native 
country,  which  was  under  the  charge  of  the 
same  Order. 

At  this  last-named  institution,  Mahony  was 


FATHER  PROUT  241 

made  prefect  and  master  of  rhetoric.  What- 
ever doubt  there  might  be  touching  his  voca- 
tion for  the  priesthood,  there  could  exist  none 
as  to  his  attainments.  After  a  brief  but  edi- 
fying season  of  grace,  the  young  prefect,  with 
some  congenial  spirits,  took  a  day's  outing. 
Potheen  somehow  figured  in  the  diversions, 
and,  as  a  result,  all  had  to  be  carried  on  turf 
loads  to  the  college  at  midnight.  The  rev- 
erend authorities  were  justly  scandalised, 
though,  I  think,  they  might  have  made  more 
allowance  for  the  punch,  the  smoky  devil  in 
which  all  the  papal  bulls  since  St.  Patrick 
might  neither  exorcise  nor  excommunicate. 
The  leader  of  misrule  was  sent  back  to  the 
continent,  and  spent  two  years  more  in  Rome, 
disciplining  his  restless  spirit,  but  (I  fear 
much)  forgetting  to  say  mea  culpa  when  the 
bright  world  opened,  at  rare  intervals,  its 
seduction  before  him. 

At  last  Francis  Sylvester  Mahony  obtained 
his  desire,  and,  with  much  misgiving  on  the 
part  of  his  spiritual  fathers,  he  was  ordained 


242  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

a  priest  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  at 
Lucca.  In  due  time  he  saw  and  repented  his 
mistake,  which  cast  a  shadow  over  his  whole 
after  life.  With  a  nature  intolerant  of  re- 
straint and  a  pride  of  intellect  that  knew  no 
compromise,  the  humble  and  laborious  sta- 
tion of  a  simple  priest  was  not  for  Francis 
Mahony.  A  born  man  of  letters,  with  the 
need  of  expression  came  the  need  of  freedom. 
There  was  in  Mahony  no  tincture  of  the 
hypocrite.  He  refused  to  eat  bread  at  the 
cost  of  his  self-respect,  and,  turning  aside  from 
that  which  had  been  the  cherished  ambition 
of  his  early  life,  he  took  up  manfully  the  hard 
portion  of  the  literary  worker. 

But  note  this:  He  was  never  what  is 
called  an  "unfrocked  priest,"  a  term  of  re- 
proach perhaps  the  most  poignant  among  the 
race  from  which  he  sprang.  The  act  of  sec- 
ularisation was  voluntary.  Nor,  in  his  freest 
Bohemian  moments,  would  he  permit  the 
slightest  aspersion  upon  the  priestly  character. 
Though  he  felt  himself  spiritually  without 


FATHER  PROUT  243 

the  temple,  he  clung  with  a  strange  pride  to 
the  mere  empty  name  of  that  sacred  calling 
which  had  cost  him  so  many  weary  years  of 
probation.  Sacerdos  in  aeternum  ordinem 
Melchizedec.  And  to  the  last  he  read  his 
breviary  as  faithfully  as  he  read  his  well-be- 
loved Horace  and  Beranger. 


244  NOVA  HIBERNIA 


II 

THERE  is  a  droll  story  that  Rome  once 
contemplated  making  a  cardinal  of 
Father  Prout,  as  a  suitable  recognition  of  his 
eminent  literary  attainments.  It  is  said  that 
some  members  of  the  Sacred  College  got  hold 
of  Prout's  polyglot  version  of  a  familiar  Irish 
song  and  were  so  delighted  with  it  that  they 
instantly  moved  the  Holy  Father  to  confer 
the  red  hat  upon  an  author  so  deserving.  A 
little  examination  of  the  records  spoiled  the 
most  unique  proposition  in  ecclesiastical  his- 
tory. Father  Prout's  comment  is  reported  to 
have  been:  "All  roads,  they  say,  lead  to 
Rome,  but  would  it  not  have  been  droll  if  I 
had  got  myself  there  through  the  Groves  of 
Blarney?"  The  reference  is  to  writings 
which  have  indeed  brought  him  farther  on  his 
way. 


FATHER  PROUT  245 

The  great  Archbishop  McHale  ("John  of 
Tuam")  once  rebuked  a  censor  of  Prout  with 
the  remark:  "The  man  who  wrote  the  Prout 
Papers  is  an  honour  to  his  country."  These 
famous  essays,  which  form  the  corner-stone 
of  Prout's  literary  reputation,  were  contrib- 
uted to  Fraser's  Magazine  for  the  year  1834. 
They  have  been  happily  described  as  a  "mix- 
ture of  Toryism,  classicism,  sarcasm  and 
punch."  Among  scholarly  readers  the  fame 
of  Prout  has  steadily  appreciated,  and  to-day 
the  Prout  Papers  seem  to  occupy  as  secure  a 
place  as  the  Essays  of  Elia,  which  they  must 
be  allowed  to  surpass  in  variety  of  wit  and 
ingenious  learning. 

Father  Prout  was  the  friend  of  Dickens  and 
of  Thackeray.  He  contributed  to  Bentley's 
Miscellany,  of  which  Dickens  was  editor,  and 
from  Italy  he  sent  a  congratulatory  ode  to 
Thackeray  on  the  establishment  of  the  Corn- 
hill  Magazine.  Dr.  Maginn  and  Father 
Prout  had  so  many  things  in  common,  as  well 
as  an  Irish  temperament,  that  one  looks  for 


246  NOVA  HIBERXTA 

some  trace  of  jealousy  in  their  brilliant  emu- 
lation. I  am  glad  to  say,  as  an  Irishman,  that 
there  is  not  the  least  suggestion  of  an  un- 
worthy feeling  between  these  famous  men. 
Maginn  it  was  who  introduced  Prout  to  the 
columns  of  Fraser's  and  gave  him  the  place 
of  honour  during  twelve  successive  issues  of 
the  magazine.  There  is  not  so  much  love 
wasted  among  the  literary  fraternity  as  to  ren- 
der nugatory  the  circumstance  of  this  gener- 
ous friendship.  When  we  remember  the 
quarrel  between  Thackeray  and  Dickens, 
which  divided  the  British  nation  into  two  hos- 
tile camps,  we  may  wonder  the  more  at  it. 
Perhaps  a  falling  out  between  the  Doctor  and 
the  Padre  would  have  been  so  terrific  in  its 
literary  results — fancy  the  fulminations  of 
that  polyglot  armoury! — that  both  shrank 
from  the  encounter.  At  any  rate,  these  tre- 
mendous wits,  each  a  born  fighter  and  spring- 
ing from  a  race  that  never  declines  a  fight, 
met,  saluted,  smiled,  and  passed  on  their 
earthly  pilgrimage. 


FATHER  PROUT  247 

Prout  took  far  better  care  of  his  literary 
baggage  than  did  poor  Maginn,  who  wrote 
for  the  day  and  the  hour,  caring  nothing  for 
the  future.  Yet  a  simple  song  has  been  more 
effective  in  preserving  the  memory  of  Prout 
than  the  wittiest  and  most  learned  of  his 
writings.  Such  is  the  spell  of  true  sympathy, 
making  the  whole  world  kin.  A  wanderer 
for  years  in  many  lands,  singing  the  songs  of 
stranger  peoples,  he  was  equally  at  home  on 
the  banks  of  the  Tiber,  the  Arno,  the  Seine 
and  the  Thames.  Ah,  it  was  to  none  of  these 
that  he  poured  out  the  love  of  his  heart  when 
he  sang  the  song  of  the 

"BELLS  OF  SHANDON" 

With  deep  affection 
And  recollection 
I  often  think  of 

Those  Shandon  Bells 
Whose  sounds  so  wild  would 
In  days  of  childhood 
Fling  round  my  cradle 
Their  magic  spells: 


248  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

On  this  I  ponder 
Where'er  I  wander, 
And  thus  grow  fonder 

Sweet  Cork,  of  thee, 
With  thy  bells  of  Shandon 
That  sound  so  grand  on 
The  pleasant  waters 

Of  the  river  Lee. 

I've  heard  bells  chiming 
Full  many  a  clime  in, 
Tolling  sublime  in 

Cathedral   shrine; 
While  at  a  glib  rate 
Brass  tongues  would  vibrate — 

But  all  their  music 

Spoke   naught   like   thine; 
For    memory   dwelling 
On  each  proud  swelling 
Of  the  belfry  knelling 

Its  bold  notes  free, 
Made  the  bells  of  Shandon 
Sound  far  more  grand  on 

The  pleasant  waters 
Of  the  river  Lee. 


FATHER  PROUT  249 

I've  heard  bells  tolling 

Old  "Adrian's  Mole"  in, 
Their  thunder  rolling 

From  the  Vatican ; 
And  cymbals  glorious 
Swinging  uproarious 
In  the  gorgeous  turrets 

Of  Notre  Dame; 
But  thy  sounds  were  sweeter 
Than  the  dome  of  Peter 
Flings  o'er  the  Tiber, 

Pealing  solemnly: 
O  the  bells  of  Shandon 
Sound  far  more  grand  on 
The  pleasant  waters 

Of  the  river  Lee. 

There's  a  bell  in  Moscow, 
While  on  tower  and  Kiosk,  O! 
In  Saint  Sophia 
The  Turkman  gets, 
And  loud  in  air 
Calls  men  to  prayer 

From  the  tapering  summit 
Of  tall  minarets. 


250  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

Such  empty  phantom 
I  freely  grant  'em, 
But  there's  an  anthem 

More  dear  to  me; 
Tis  the  bells  of  Shandon 
That  sound  so  grand  on 
The  pleasant  waters 

Of  the  river  Lee. 


FATHER  PROUT  251 


III 

P ROUT'S  habit  of  "upsetting  things  into 
English,"  from  the  modern  as  well  as 
the  classic  languages,  has  made  the  world  his 
debtor  and  greatly  enriched  his  literary  leg- 
acy. Excellent  as  are  his  translations  from 
Beranger,  Hugo  and  the  Italian  poets,  it  is  to 
his  renderings  from  Horace  that  we  must 
award  the  palm.  I  have  already  noted  his 
keen  sympathy  with  the  most  charming  and 
immortally  young  of  classic  writers.  Some- 
thing of  the  same  fine  touch  is  visible  in  Ma- 
ginn's  Homeric  ballads,  and  perhaps  these  are 
to  be  preferred  for  a  rude  vigour  and  fidelity 
to  the  original.  You  do  not  always  get  what 
you  expect  from  the  roguish  Father  Prout. 
The  surprise  of  his  wit  is  as  captivating  and 
unexpected  as  the  famous  Killarney  echo: 

"How  do  you  do,  Paddy  Blake?"— 
"Pretty  well,  I  thank  you." 


252  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

Nevertheless,  of  the  many  hands  that  have 
laboured  at  Horace — alas!  the  labour  is  too 
often  manifest — the  most  deft  and  skilful,  I 
believe,  was  the  hand  of  Prout.  The  felicity 
of  his  verse  is  no  less  admirable  than  the  sure- 
ness  of  his  interpretation,  and  the  occasional 
familiarity  which  he  takes  with  the  classic 
text  only  gives  a  zest  to  the  reading.  I  should 
add  that  the  prose  essays  in  which  these 
Horatian  renderings  are  imbedded  seem  to 
me  among  the  best  of  their  kind. 

Mr.  Andrew  Lang,  who  can  seldom  resist 
the  temptation  to  say  a  smart  thing, — an  in- 
dulgence which  may  easily  be  pardoned  to  a 
North  Briton, — remarks  that  Doctor  Maginn 
in  his  translations  from  the  Greek  does  not 
scruple  to  make  Homer  dance  an  Irish  jig. 
Whatever  truth  or  point  may  lie  in  this  ob- 
servation, it  is  not  to  be  gainsaid  that  Prout's 
paraphrases  of  Horace  are  the  better  for  their 
Milesian  flavour.  Indeed,  they  have  the 
somewhat  paradoxical  merit  of  being  at  once 
genuinely  classical   and   unmistakably   Irish. 


FATHER  PROUT  253 

However,  when  they  are  most  Irish,  it  may 
be  suspected  that  the  Padre  is  but  having  his 
"game"'  with  us.  That  he  could,  when  he 
cared,  translate  both  worthily  and  powerfully, 
— like  a  scholar  and  a  poet, — is  sufficiently 
attested  by  his  unsurpassed  rendering  of  Ode 
II.,  Lib.  I.  Such  of  my  readers  as  are  not 
acquainted  with  the  original  will  thank  me 
for  laying  this  fine  version  before  them, — un- 
questionably the  tour  de  force  of  all  Horatian 
translations. 

ODE  II. 

Jam  satis  terris  nivis  atque  dirae  grandinis,  etc. 
Since  Jove  decreed  in  storm  to  vent 
The  winter  of  his  discontent, 
Thundering   o'er   Rome   impenitent 

With  red  right  hand, 
The  flood-gates  of  the  firmament 

Have  drenched  the  land. 

Terror  hath  seized  the  minds  of  men, 
Who  deemed  the  days  had  come  again 
When  Proteus  led,  up  mount  and  glen, 
And  verdant  lawn, 


254  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

Of  teeming  ocean's  darksome  den, 
The  monstrous  spawn. 

When  Pyrrha  saw  the  ringdove's  nest 
Harbour  a  strange  unbidden  guest, 
And  by  the  deluge  dispossesst 

Of  glade  and  grove, 
Deer  down  the  tide  with  antler'd  crest 

Affrighted   drove. 

We  saw  the  yellow  Tiber,  sped 
Back  to  his  Tuscan  fountain-head, 
O'erwhelm  the  sacred  and  the  dead 

In  one  fell  doom, 
And  Vesta's  pile  in  ruins  spread, 

And  Numa's  tomb. 
*     *     * 

Whom  can  our  country  call  to  aid? 
Where  must  the  patriot's  vow  be  paid? 
With  orisons  shall  vestal  maid 

Fatigue  the  skies? 
Or  will  not  Vesta's  frown  upbraid 

Her  votaries? 

Augur  Apollo!  shall  we  kneel 
To  thee,  and  for  our  commonweal 


FATHER  PROUT  255 

With  humbled  consciousness  appeal? 

Oh,  quell  the  storm! 
Come,  though  a  silver  vapor  veil 

Thy  radiant  form! 


Will  Venus  from  Mount  Eryx  stoop 
And  to  our  succor  hie  with  troop 
Of  laughing  Graces,  and  a  group 

Of  cupids  round  her? 
Or  comest  thou  with  wild  war-whoop, 

Dread  Mars!  our  Founder? 

Whose  voice  so  long  bade  peace  avaunt, 
Whose  war-dogs  still  for  slaughter  pant, 
The  tented  field  thy  chosen  haunt, 

Thy  child,  the  Roman, 
Fierce  legioner,  whose  visage  gaunt 

Scowls  on  the  foeman. 

Or  hath  young  Hermes,  Maia's  son, 
The  graceful  guise  and  form  put  on 
Of  thee,  Augustus?  and  begun 

( Celestial  stranger ! ) 
To  wear  the  name  which  thou  hast  won — ■ 

"Cesar's  Avenger"? 


256  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

Blest  be  the  days  of  thy  sojourn, 

Distant  the  hour  when  Rome  shall  mourn 

The  fatal  sight  of  thy  return 

To  Heaven  again ; 
Forced  by  a  guilty  age  to  spurn 

The  haunts  of  men. 

Rather  remain,  beloved,  adored, 
Since  Rome,  reliant  on  thy  sword, 
To  thee  of  Julius  hath  restored 

The  rich  reversion: 
Baffle  Assyria's  hovering  horde 

And  smite  the  Persian! 

Now,  let  us  take, — and  with  this  selection 
we  must  be  perforce  content, — the  most 
charming  song  of  all  classical  antiquity,  the 
famous  Ode  for  Lalage,  which  Father  Prout 
has  rendered  with  inimitable  grace  and  fidel- 
ity. 

ODE  XXII. 

Integer  vitae  scelerisque  purus. 
Aristius!  if  thou  canst  secure 
A  conscience  calm,  with  morals  pure, 


FATHER  PROUT  257 

Look  upward  for  defence!  abjure 

All  meaner  craft — 
The  bow  and  arrow  of  the  Moor, 

And  poisoned  shaft. 

What  tho'  thy  perilous  path  lie  traced 
O'er  burning  Afric's  boundless  waste, 
Of  rugged  Caucasus  the  guest, 

Or  doomed  to  travel 
Where  fabulous  rivers  of  the  East 

Their  course  unravel! 

Under  my  Sabine  woodland  shade, 
Musing  upon  my  Grecian  maid, 
Unconsciously  of  late  I  strayed 

Through  glen  and  meadow, 
When  lo!  a  ravenous  wolf,  afraid, 

Fled  from  my  shadow. 

No  monster  of  such  magnitude 
Lurks  in  the  depth  of  Daunia's  wood, 
Or  roams  through  Lybia  unsubdued, 

The  land  to  curse — 
Land  of  a  fearful  lion-brood 

The  withered  nurse. 


258  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

Waft  me  away  to  deserts  wild, 
Where  vegetation  never  smiled, 
Where  sunshine  never  once  beguiled 

The  dreary  day, 
But  winters  upon  winters  piled 

For  aye  delay: 

Place  me  beneath  the  torrid  zone 
Where  man  to  dwell  was  never  known, 
I'd  cherish  still  one  thought  alone, 

Maid  of  my  choice, 
The  smile  of  thy  sweet  lip — the  tone 

Of  thy  sweet  voice! 


FATHER  PROUT  259 


IV 

BLANCHARD  JERROLD  has  described 
the  author  of  the  Prout  papers  as  of  a  race 
now  extinct,  "like  the  old  breed  of  Irish  wolf- 
dogs."  It  is  at  least  certain  that  the  pattern 
of  his  wit  appears  to  have  been  lost.  "An 
odd,  uncomfortable  little  man,"  says  Jerrold 
elsewhere,  "with  a  roguish  Hibernian  mouth 
and  grey,  piercing  eyes."  That  is  also  a  good 
bit  of  description,  showing  the  free  touch  of  a 
contemporary,  which  pictures  for  us  the 
"short,  spare  man,  stooping  as  he  went,  with 
the  right  arm  clasped  in  the  left  hand  behind 
him;  a  sharp  face — a  mocking  lip,  and  an 
ecclesiastical  garb  of  slovenly  appearance. 
Such  was  the  old  Fraserian,"  adds  the  writer, 
"who  would  laugh  outright  at  times,  quite  un- 
conscious of  bystanders,  as  he  slouched  toward 
Temple  Bar." 


260  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

Prout's  letters  from  Italy,  contributed  to 
the  London  Daily  News  during  the  brief  pe- 
riod of  Dickens's  editorship,  have,  as  we 
might  naturally  expect,  rather  a  literary  than 
a  journalistic  value.  Nevertheless,  they  are 
worthy  documents  of  the  time,  and  the  Padre 
shows  himself  no  Tory  in  recording  the  prog- 
ress of  Italian  liberation.  Meantime,  Ireland 
was  struggling  along  in  the  old  way  (which 
has  not  yet  been  entirely  changed  for  a  bet- 
ter), and  Prout  evinced  that  his  sympathies 
were  not  with  a  majority  of  his  own  country- 
men by  inditing  a  fierce  lampoon  upon 
O'Connell.  Swift  himself  never  dipped  his 
pen  deeper  in  gall  than  did  Prout  when  he 
wrote  the  vitriolic  stanzas  of  the  "Lay  of 
Lazarus."  Doubtless  it  was  inspired  by  hon- 
est feeling;  but,  as  an  Irishman,  he  might 
have  spared  adding  to  his  country's  shame. 
To  this  it  may  be  cynically  rejoined  that,  as 
an  Irishman,  he  couldn't  help  doing  it. 

Much  has  been  written  on  the  subject  of 
Prout's  residence  in  Paris,  where,  during  the 


FATHER  PROUT  261 

later  years  of  his  life,  he  was  a  marked  figure. 
Speaking  the  French  language  perfectly,  he 
came  to  be  regarded  by  the  Parisians  as  one 
of  their  own  notables.  I  need  not  here  re- 
mark that  there  was  a  truly  Gallic  lightness 
in  his  wit,  which  has  induced  one  of  his  biog- 
raphers to  describe  his  mental  make-up  as  a 
compound  of  Rabelais  and  Voltaire.  It  is 
certain  that  he  took  kindly  to  the  gay  Paris- 
ians, whose  love  of  novelty  and  child-like 
enthusiasms  enchanted  him.  Among  them 
he  passed  his  closing  years  happily  enough, 
earning,  with  his  pen,  as  correspondent  for 
the  London  News  or  Globe  sufficient  for  his 
needs.  He  had  his  lodging,  and  a  poor  one 
enough,  in  the  Rue  des  Moulins,  running  out 
of  Thackeray's  famous  "New  Street  of  the 
Little  Fields,"  forever  associated  with  the 
unctuous  ballad  of  the  "Bouillabaisse." 
Here  sometimes  the  solitary  little  man  re- 
ceived the  few  whom  he  admitted  to  the  near 
circle  of  his  friendship.  Ah,  what  would  not 
one  give  to  have  made  one  of  a  group  about 


262  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

the  chair  of  him  who  created  the  Rev.  An- 
drew Front,  the  lone  incumbent  of  Water- 
grasshill,  in  the  delectable  county  of  Cork; 
the  Rev.  Father  Magrath,  elegiac  poet,  and 
the  Rev.  Father  Matt  Horrogan,  of  Blarney  I 
When  the  wine  flowed,  and  the  little  man, 
sure  of  the  sympathy  of  his  audience,  and 
justly  proud  of  his  fame  (non  omnis  moriar) 
poured  forth  the  treasures  of  his  learning  and 
fancy,  mingled  with  the  lightnings  of  that  wit 
which  scathed  wherever  it  glanced — what  a 
privilege  then  to  sit  within  the  friendly  beam 
of  his  eye,  glass  to  glass  with  the  decoctor  of 
immortal  punch,  the  wizard  of  many  a  night's 
enchantment!  Ah,  kindly  reader,  let  us  not 
forget  that  he  lives  and  bids  us  ever  to  that 
favoured  audience.  .  .  . 

Thackeray,  in  his  Parisian  visits,  never 
failed  to  look  up  his  old  mentor  of  Fraser's. 
Like  Prout,  the  author  of  "Vanity  Fair"  had 
served  his  turn  as  Paris  correspondent  for  one 
or  other  of  the  London  dailies,  and  well  he 
knew  the  life  with  its  gay  Bohemianism,  its 


FATHER  PROUT  263 

ill-regulated  bounty  and  ever-recurring  short 
commons.  His  long  and  faithful  friendship 
with  Prout,  who  was  often  trying  with  his 
friends,  bears  out  the  truth  of  those  fine  lines 
in  which  Tom  Taylor  repelled  the  charge  of 
cynicism  directed  at  the  historian  of  "Es- 
mond." Thackeray  had  written  a  book  about 
Paris  which  the  Padre  pronounced  vile,  and, 
indeed,  it  can  hardly  be  reckoned  among  the 
masterpieces  of  the  great  author.  Sometimes, 
as  often  chanced  with  Prout,  no  matter  how 
distinguished  his  company,  a  testy  habit 
which  grew  upon  him  with  age,  would  break 
out  and  the  wit  would  come  dangerously  near 
to  rudeness.  With  all  his  fine  scholarship, 
Prout  (to  turn  his  own  phrase  against  him- 
self) too  plainly  revealed  the  "potato  seasoned 
with  Attic  salt."  Jerrold  employs  a  less  del- 
icate metaphor  in  remarking  upon  the  social 
errancies  of  Father  Prout.  "Prout,  in  his 
convivial  moments,"  he  says — and  I  should 
not  quote  this  if  he  had  not  elsewhere  written 
nobly  and  appreciatively  of  our  author — "re- 


264  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

minds  one  more  of  Cork  than  of  Rome!"  We 
hear  of  the  Padre  and  the  creator  of  Colonel 
Newcome  hurling  Latin  objurgatives  at  each 
other  on  an  evening  when  Prout  had  mixed 
too  often  his  favourite  concoction  of  cognac, 
lemon  and  sugar.  In  such  a  learned  battle 
the  Charterhouse  boy  would  scarcely  be 
a  match  for  the  cunning  pupil  of  the 
Jesuits. 

Taking  a  modest  liberty  with  this  legend, 
we  may  conceive  the  Padre  softening  again, 
what  with  the  soothing  influence  of  the  "ele- 
ments" and  the  honour  of  such  comradeship, 
and,  at  an  hour  which  shall  be  nameless,  in- 
sisting upon  seeing  his  great  friend  home  to 
his  lodging  hard  by  in  the  Place  Vendome. 
So,  there  they  go  at  last,  the  big  man  and  the 
small — a  sight  worth  seeing,  you'll  grant  me 
— somewhat  deviously  to  be  sure,  but  well 
enough  for  all  that — down  the  memorable 
"Street  of  the  Little  Fields."  One  of  the 
things  that  make  me  love  Thackeray  is  his 
kind    and    steady    friendship    for   the    gifted 


FATHER  PROUT  265 

Irishman,  so  caustic  and  sensitive,  yet  with  his 
own  heart  filled  with  a  great  loneliness. 

Now  the  gossips  have  much  to  say  about  the 
doings  of  famous  men,  so  we  learn  from  more 
than  one  source  that  less  celebrated  guests 
than  William  Makepeace  Thackeray  were  fa- 
voured with  an  unpleasantly  near  view  of  the 
Padre's  infirmity  and  carried  away  an  in- 
tensely realised  sense  of  the  Proutian  sarcasm. 
But  it  seems  the  entertainment  was  well  worth 
the  price,  for  few  but  pleasing  records  remain 
of  those  nodes  ccenceque  deum  in  the  Rue 
des  Moulins. 

Here,  near  the  famous  "Street  of  the  Little 
Fields,"  the  solitary  little  man  died,  in  the 
month  of  May,  1866.  The  date  seems 
strangely  recent,  for  we  naturally  associate 
with  him  the  early  thirties,  the  period  of  the 
Prout  papers.  A  priest  of  that  faith  to  which, 
in  his  heart  of  hearts,  he  had  never  been 
recreant,  knelt  at  his  bedside  and  consoled  his 
last  moments.  And  the  good  Abbe  Rogerson 
tells  us:     "He  was  as  a  child  wearied  and 


266  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

worn  out  after  a  day's  wandering:  when  it 
had  been  lost  and  was  found;  when  it  had 
hungered  and  was  fed  again." 

For  many  years  he  had  lived  among  the 
kindly  French  people,  whom  he  loved  as  the 
poet  Heine  loved  them.  But  on  his  death 
Cork  claimed  the  ashes  of  her  famous  son. 
How  like  the  end  was,  after  all,  to  the  begin- 
ning! For  he  lies  at  rest  on  the  bank  of  that 
pleasant  river  whose  murmur  mingled  with 
his  childish  dreams;  under  the  shadow  of  the 
solemn  spire,  where  the  bells  of  Shandon  ring 
down  their  benediction  upon  him. 


RICHARD  BRINSLEY  SHERIDAN 

SHERIDAN  stopped  writing  for  the  stage 
at  twenty-eight,  as  regards  original  work, 
having  surpassed  the  glory  of  Congreve  at 
that  early  age  with  "The  Rivals"  and  "The 
School  for  Scandal."  It  is  curious,  too,  that 
of  this  famous  brace  of  successes  the  earlier 
and  first  named  is  the  better  in  the  depiction 
of  character  and  the  elements  of  true  comedy. 
Like  Congreve,  another  though  less  typical 
Irishman,  Sheridan  succumbed  to  the  fascina- 
tion of  society;  but  he  never  became  a  glori- 
fied snob,  as  did  the  former,  who  told  Voltaire 
that  he  wished  to  be  met  as  a  gentleman,  not 
as  a  poet!  The  superstition  of  society,  with 
its  arbitrary,  often  unmerited  cachet  of  rank 
or  distinction,  no  longer  dominates  the  true 
literary  man — fancy  Swinburne  or  even  Kip- 
ling giving  up  his  work  to  dawdle  at  evening 

267 


268  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

parties  or  to  warm  a  chair  at  a  Duchess's  din- 
ners. Congreve,  by  the  way,  who  loved  to  do 
such  things,  died  a  snob,  leaving  his  very  tidy 
savings  to  the  Duchess  of  Marlborough 
(daughter  of  the  terrible  Sarah)  who  had  no 
need  of  the  money,  while  he  left  but  a  pittance 
to  the  once  beautiful  Bracegirdle  (who  had 
given  the  cold  creature  her  love)  surviving  in 
neglect  and  poverty.  Nothing  dehumanises 
a  man  like  snobbery,  and  intellect  carries  no 
immunity. 

The  parallel  with  Sheridan  here  divides, 
for  the  later  Irishman  lacked  none  of  the  gen- 
erous virtues.  But  it  must  be  granted  that, 
even  in  a  greater  degree  than  Congreve  (who 
was  vastly  overrated  by  his  contemporaries) 
he  gave  to  society  and  the  bottle  what  was 
meant  for  mankind.  He  lives  by  the  glory 
of  his  youth  : — of  the  forty  years  following  his 
splendid,  and  as  it  proved,  crowning  success 
with  the  "School  for  Scandal,"  there  is  not 
much  to  be  said,  in  his  honour.  His  parlia- 
mentary career  was  brilliant,  yet  left  no  solid 


SHERIDAN  269 

fruits.  Even  the  celebrated  speech  at  Has- 
tings's trial  is  as  good  as  lost,  and  few  now 
believe  that  it  merited  the  panegyrics  of  the 
hour.  The  fate  of  this  famous  address  has  al- 
ways seemed  strange  to  me,  for  Sheridan  was 
known  to  take  the  greatest  pains  with  his  more 
serious  efforts,  while  he  had  the  reputation  of 
anxiously  rehearsing  his  careless  after-dinner 
epigrams.  Perhaps  when  he  refused  the  offer 
of  a  thousand  pounds  for  the  copyright  of  the 
speech  that  Burke  pronounced  "the  most  as- 
tonishing effort  of  eloquence,  argument  and 
wit  united,  of  which  there  was  any  record  or 
tradition," — he  deemed  it  wiser  to  leave  a  leg- 
end rather  than  the  performance  itself  behind 
him.  Dramatic  values  were  never  slurred  in 
the  calculations  of  the  manager  of  Drury 
Lane. 

Sheridan  wrote  no  more  original  plays  after 
he  had  fully  entered  upon  his  political  and 
social  career.  Dissipation,  so  common  among 
the  highest  in  that  age  of  drunkenness,  and 
also  the  Irishman's  hatred  of  application,  had 


270  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

something  to  do  with  this  abandonment  of  his 
natural  vocation.  Besides,  no  doubt,  he 
feared  to  try  conclusions  with  the  author  of 
"The  School  for  Scandal,"  for  the  factitious 
talent  of  the  man  dreaded  nothing  so  much  as 
to  fall  below  his  own  mark.  Yet  I  think  the 
controlling  motive  with  Sheridan  in  these  cir- 
cumstances was  the  same  as  with  Congreve, — 
a  feeling  that  the  playwright  was  incompat- 
ible with  the  man  of  society. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  in  Sheridan's 
day  society  exercised  a  greater  tyranny  than 
in  ours,  and  its  authority  descending  from  the 
Throne,  was  absolute.  (In  the  next  genera- 
tion it  was  able  to  make  a  pariah  of  Byron, 
and  he  is  still  under  sentence.)  Sheridan 
was  an  Irishman,  with  an  Irishman's  hatred 
of  being  "set  down"  or  depreciated — perhaps 
the  most  sensitive  nerve  of  his  ultra-sensitive 
race.  He  loved  applause  and  admiration,  as 
was  natural  to  the  son  of  an  actor.  He  pos- 
sessed the  "social  virtues,"  as  they  were  then 
esteemed,  in  exaggeration;  and  he  was  mar- 


SHERIDAN  271 

ried  to  a  lovely  and  gifted  woman  whom  he 
fondly  loved,  and  praise  of  whom  was  as  dear 
to  him  as  his  own.  Account  should  be  taken 
of  these  things  in  judging  him;  yet  when  full 
allowance  has  been  made,  it  must  still  be  re- 
gretted that  when  he  put  on  his  dress-coat, 
Sheridan  put  off  his  genius;  that  for  the  hon- 
our of  intimate  association  with  the  Prince 
Regent  and  Beau  Brummel,  he  abjured  the 
use  of  a  talent  that  has  not  been  given  to  a 
half  dozen  men  in  the  history  of  English  com- 
edy. 

Vanity,  the  wish  to  shine,  is  inherent  in  the 
type  of  Irish  character  that  Sheridan  exem- 
plified, and  it  costs  less  effort  to  win  the  ap- 
plause of  a  drawing-room  or  of  a  circle  of 
boon  companions  passing  the  bottle  than  to 
burn  the  midnight  oil  by  which  laurels  en- 
during are  gained.  The  choice  was  desper- 
ately easy  to  poor  Sheridan,  who  loved  to 
water  his  laurels  in  the  fashion  then  approved, 
as  a  poet  somewhat  late  in  that  devil-may-care 
day  expressed  it: — 


272  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

My  Muse,  too,  when  her  wings  are  dry, 

No  frolic  flights  will  take; 
But  round  a  bowl  she'll  dip  and  fly 

Like  swallows  round  a  lake. 
If  then  the  nymph  must  have  her  share 

Before  she'll  bless  her  swain, 
Why,  that's  I  think  a  reason  fair 

To  fill  my  glass  again ! 

But  as  I  have  said,  social  vanity  was  doubt- 
less his  compelling  motive.  In  our  day  we 
have  seen  a  scarcely  less  gifted  countryman  of 
Sheridan's  attempting  to  duplicate  his  role 
with  great  brilliancy  and  succeeding  in  noth- 
ing so  admirably  as  in  his  character  of  society 
wit  and  dandy.  Oscar  Wilde  was  indeed  a 
very  clever  rather  than  a  great  man,  while 
Sheridan  had  marked  traits  of  greatness.  But 
Wilde's  refusal  to  lampoon  English  high  so- 
ciety for  a  French  newspaper,  after  that 
society  had  cast  him  out  as  a  leper  with  a 
prison  brand  upon  him,  helps  to  fix  the  like- 
ness between  these  two  men  of  different  gen- 
erations.    It  is  not  less  interesting  from  the 


SHERIDAN  273 

fact  that  "The  School  for  Scandal"  was  the 
prototype  of  "Lady  Windermere's  Fan." 
Each  of  these  gifted  men  made  too  great  a  set 
at  society,  plumed  himself  too  much  on  such 
success  as  he  achieved,  and  paid  a  bitter  price 
for  it  in  the  end.  And  it  is  perfectly  certain 
that  but  for  this  fatal  source  of  dissipation  and 
distraction,  both  would  have  done  more  and 
better  work;  and,  I  suspect,  each  would  have 
escaped  his  catastrophe.  .  .  . 

Byron  writing  to  Moore  from  Italy,  recalls 
the  times  when  "we  used  to  dine  with  Rogers, 
and  talk  laxly,  and  go  to  parties,  and  hear  poor 
Sheridan  now  and  then.  Do  you  remember 
one  night  he  was  so  tipsy  I  was  forced  to  put 
his  cocked  hat  on  him — for  he  could  not, — 
and  I  let  him  down  at  Brookes's  much  as  he 
must  since  have  been  let  down  into  his 
grave."  .  .  . 

Poor  Sheridan  indeed!  We  get  other 
glimpses  of  him  toward  the  close  of  what  was 
for  a  season  the  most  brilliant  and  enviable 
career  in  England.     His  debts  and  distresses 


274  NOVA  HIBERNIA 

which  the  factitious  terrors  of  drink  exag- 
gerated; his  tears  and  shame  at  being  seized 
and  thrown  into  a  sponging  house  for  debt; 
and  finally  the  ironic  grandeur  of  that  funeral 
which  was  followed  by  princes,  dukes,  earls, 
viscounts  and  bishops,  when  his  worn-out 
body  and  broken  heart  were  borne  to  West- 
minster Abbey. 

"Oh,  it  sickens  the  heart,"  cries  Moore  in  a 
fine  burst  of  elegiac  passion, — 

Oh!  it  sickens  the  heart  to  see  bosoms  so  hollow 
And  spirits  so  mean  in  the  great  and  high-born ; 

To  think  what  a  long  line  of  titles  may  follow 
The  relics  of  him  who  died  friendless  and  lorn ! 

Yet  one  must  believe  that  the  spirit  of  Sher- 
idan, if  conscious,  overlooked  the  funeral  with 
due  satisfaction: — it  was  in  truth  for  this  sort 
of  thing  that  he  had  melted  the  pearl  of  his 
genius  in  the  wine-cup  and  survived  his  proper 
self  so  many  barren  years. 

THE  END 


DATE  DUE 


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